April 28, 2006
By Lucille Davie
GABRIELLE Ozynski has done it again. In 2004 she beautified the Yeoville swimming pool with gorgeous mosaic, and now she's done the same for the Ellis Park and Rosettenville swimming pools.
Ozynski believes that it is important to beautify areas that children frequent. "Children need to see that somebody cares and that they count," she says.
But it's more than that. "I feel strongly that public art influences the areas around it – it exposes people to a way of thinking and viewing that they may have never encountered before. Beauty inspires."
Ozynski hopes too that beautifying a small area will uplift the immediate environment around the pools. And, like the colourful entrance to the Yeoville pool, the Ellis Park pool, with its sparkling blue wave theme, and the Rosettenville pool, with its red and black sun over the entrance, have been transformed.
Ozynski, a Yeoville resident, says she chose the watery design with greens, blues and mirrors for Ellis Park because it felt right for the façade – it captured the reflections of the sparkling water inside. The reds, blacks and creams of the Rosettenville pool were perfect for that pool because its façade looked like an old cinema, and those colours enhanced the look.
As with the Yeoville pool, the City came to the party too: in Yeoville it painted the entrance columns sky blue to blend with the blues there, in Rosettenville it painted the columns cream to enhance the new-look dramatic entrance.
Ozynski didn't do the work alone. She was joined by two women from a shelter for battered women, Joyce Monyana and Siza Prince, and Simon Mashaba, the night caretaker from the building where she lives. "Part of the project was to include and pay unemployed people per project, as well as to provide skills training."
The work was done on weekends as Ozynski works full time.
Valuable partnerships have been created. "Simon is my right-hand man; he is very capable, diligent and always takes the initiative. I'm going to use him in all future and private work," she explains.
After completing the Yeoville pool, for which she used her own funds, Ozynski was keen to do other pools in Region 8 but no funding was available. So she approached Business and Arts South Africa (Basa), the National Arts Council and Johannesburg Water, and was given R25 000, R50 000 and R10 000 respectively.
Peter Kroll Tiles, which had donated seconds tiles for the Yeoville pool, also supplied tiles for the other two pools.
To acknowledge these donations, Peter Kroll Tiles has been nominated for the 2005 Business Day/Basa Sponsorship by a Small Business award, to be announced at the end of May.
Ozynski believes that any Joburger can get involved in the rejuvenation of the city. "Johannesburg offers opportunities," she says, "it is a young city embarking on a process of transformation. The right energy exists now and people should be a part of it."
She managed to get her friends – photographers, prosecutors, architects, designers and non-governmental organisation workers – to help with the Yeoville pool.
Perhaps they will lend a hand again when she does the children's mosaic area at the park in Yeoville, a Johannesburg Development Agency project, which has already begun.
The park is to be totally revamped, says Seipati More, the agency's development manager, with new paving, lighting and fencing, new play equipment and the conversion of the present tennis courts into multi-purpose courts, in the pipeline. There will be also tables with built-in mosaic games like checkers and chess. The project will cost R4-million, with R300 000 allocated to the children's mosaic play area.
Ozynski loves the medium, saying it has several advantages: it uplifts a dingy area, it is hardy and can't be vandalised, it can be used in many odd spaces, it is not difficult to work with and it can be easily learned. "And it's public art which makes an impact," she adds.
The artist has two private jobs she is preparing for – one on the inside walls of a natural swimming pool, the other an outside shower wall. But she's always available if the City needs her and has the funding. "I'd love to do more mosaic in the inner city."
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