Rooted in word

Installed June of 2025!

15 painted columns at the Sterling Heights Public Library

Sterling Heights Public Library has mission and vision statements that speak to their goal of self improvement, growth, learning, inclusion, and exploration. This mural exemplifies and symbolizes each of those through 9 unique and thoughtful designs.

Each column base is focused upon different book genres: fantasy, mystery, historical, romance, sports, education, biography, self help, drama. To portray those in a literal sense, each column base will feature a small bookshelf with varying novel orientations and old edition spines. I then emphasizes growth and cultivation by bringing in floral and gardening elements.

The “language of flowers”, or floriography, was created by Harem women to communicate without guards knowing in the Victorian Era. It was credited to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, an English poet and Aristocrat. By combining this association of words and objects, especially those being plants and flowers as a multilayer symbolic image of both words, phrases, and gardening, with the varying genres included in my proposal would be perfect.