Résumé – Large-scale Public Artworks
Pacific Beach Historical Mural 1988, 60 x 20 ft, Downtown Pacific Beach CA Painted from a photograph taken in 1943. The mural is positioned on the same corner depicted in the image so that when one stands on the corner one can see the current view side by side with how the same view looked in 1943.
“America’s Finest City” 1989, 6,000 square ft. Downtown San Diego CA (photo included) A landmark in the business district. http://www.surfeitofpassion.com/so-whats-the-latest-news/
“Péon Tradition” Mural, 1994, 25 x 20 ft, Viejas Band of the Kumeyaay Nation, Viejas Casino, Alpine CA. Created after 4 months of extensive research with tribal elders and local historians to depict the sacred ceremonial gambling game of Péon. It was very important to the Viejas Band that the public know that gambling was part of indigenous culture.(not shown)
“Nuestro Barrio” (“Our Neighborhood”) Mural, 1996, 150 x 8 ft. Golden Hill Recreation Center, San Diego CA. Composed and created after a semester-long series of workshops with advanced local high school art students who were guided to create painted images of what they thought made their community interesting and made them proud to live there.
“Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe” mosaic, 1999, 6 x 4 ft. Las Americas Premium Outlets, San Ysidro CA. Created for client C. Sam Marasco/LandGrant Development to complement the cross-border design themes of the shopping center.
“Angels and Rogues: a Horton Family History” Mural 25 x 14 ft, 2001, private home, Westwood CA. Four months of research with many family members went into creating a visual representation of 72 members and 5 generations of the Horton family. It was painted on a vaulted ceiling.
“The Hero’s Journey: Growing Our Future” 60 x 10 ft, 2002, Compton Unified School District Administration Building, Compton CA. Composed and created after a semester-long series of workshops with advanced local high school art students to depict the hopes, dreams, and struggles of forging a path from the inner city to a prosperous future.
“Bookie Clark Memorial Mural” 2003, 50 x 25 ft. Monroe Clark Middle School, City Heights, San Diego. Created to depict events in the life of the school’s namesake: Monroe “Bookie” Clark. The design was developed during a semester of workshops with 8th grade art students.
“The Rancher” Mural, 2009, 20 x 17 ft, Downtown Cortez, City of Cortez CO. (photo included) A “Scribble” piece that addresses the proud history of ranching in the Southwest and, also, the negative impact of ranching to Native American communities, specifically Navajo and Ute in Colorado, who were driven off their lands to make way for Westward Expansion.
“Central Coast Cruise” Mural 30 x 7 ft, 2010, K-Man Cycle and Run , Atascadero CA. Private commission visible from Highway 101.
“Water = Life” Mural, 2012, 100 x 14 ft, Downtown Cortez, City of Cortez CO. Composed and created after a semester-long series of workshops with advanced local high school art students from the Four Corners region of the Southwest. The groups soon concluded that water determined existence in the harsh environment. Details of what students thought made their region unique filled out the four seasonal panels of the composition.
“The Tortoise Has a Spare” Mural, 2014, 30 x 15 ft, Swamp Rabbit Trail, Greenville SC. (photo included). A “Scribble” piece. An old “tail” told in a new way. A whimsical take on cycling for the Swamp Rabbit Trail.
“The Runner” Metal Sculpture, 2015, 5.5 x 10 ft, Swamp Rabbit Trail, Greenville SC. (photo included) A “Scribble” piece. Created to celebrate running on the Swamp Rabbit Trail and funded by Visit Greenville and the Greenville Track Club in memory of former Track Club administrator Darrell Jennewine. A large engraved plaque with his running shoes in bronze comprise the foundation for a bench on the Trail opposite the sculpture.
“Two for the Trail” Metal Sculpture, 2016, 7.5 x 7.5 Swamp Rabbit Trail extension, Greenville SC. (photo included) A “Scribble” piece commissioned by a private resident in Traveler’s Rest whose property includes an easement for the Trail expansion and is installed so that the public can view the piece from the Trail. (Not shown)
“Peloton Takes the Classic Curve” Metal Sculpture, 2019 – 2022, 26 x 10 x 10 ft. Simonds Parkway, Redlands CA. Depicting a group of 9 cyclists. Created to commemorate The Redlands Bicycle Classic, an annual event. Paused during covid pandemic. Installed 2023.
“Diving Skyward” Mural, 2022, 25 x 22’ Seaside Center for Spiritual Living, Encinitas CA. Designed as part of the interior renovation to transform the sanctuary auditorium. The mural incorporates breaching dolphins rendered in the Artist’s signature Scribble style. The mural is featured on all of SCSL promotional and social media.
“Pedal Forward Fresno” Metal Sculpture, 2023, 24 x 8 x 8 ft. California State University Fresno. Commissioned by Fresno State Transportation Institute as part of a citywide collection of cycling sculptures installed adjacent to roadways, designed to reduce collision deaths and injuries of cyclists and pedestrians by motorists. Each sculpture depicts individual cyclists from the surrounding community.
Artist’s Bio
Kathleen King-Page was born in Chicago to a Navy family. Her father would soon retire from his 27-year career and move the family to his favorite port city of San Diego. Thus the Artist grew up in the sleepy coastal town of Pacific Beach, just north of the city, where she began her career as a public muralist in 1983. With the ice and snow a hazy memory, King-Page would grow to consider herself a fully Southwestern soul with a big love for blue water and a life-long affection for riding a bike!
Her life has been a creative one from the beginning. Classes in ballet, piano, theater, and gymnastics started at the age of four and the talent for drawing was evident by age five. A spinal defect emerged in her teens that would crush her dreams of a career in dance. But not to worry! Her talent for visual art took the stage and all that motion would eventually re-emerge in her signature style “The Scribble”.
Along the way, a love of music and a mellifluous voice led to a 5-year foray in radio starting with an internship at KGB FM including voiceover work. That led to a founding role at 91x FM(XTRA), which initially broadcast from studios in Tijuana before the station moved stateside. Eventually an on-air slot at KPBS opened up and Kathleen was thrilled to participate. Connecting with the fans at concerts and meeting music celebrities were certainly fun perks!
The breakout mural was the 62 x 14 ft. Pacific Beach Historical Mural, created for her hometown’s centennial. Painting on cinder block, Ms. King-Page reproduced a historic photograph of the town’s main boulevard taken in 1943. It was an instant hit with the locals and all the ensuing media attention caught the eye of developers and architects.
As the public art commissions picked up the glamorous airwaves were left behind. But the arts community, centered around San Diego’s Gaslamp Quarter, began buzzing in the 1990s. Invitations to collaborate with various theatrical groups allowed King-Page to tap into her theater background and find expression in set and costume design for theatrical, performance art, dance, film, and event companies around the region.
Coordinating projects for arts organizations presented opportunities to meet arts educators. As public murals were becoming more popular, art teachers were eager to involve their students. Over the following decade Ms. King-Page was thrilled with the chance to develop four different public mural making workshops for advanced art students, collaborating with four different school districts in California and Colorado. Each student project would last a full semester and culminate in the creation of a permanent public mural installation. The students were involved at every level including research, concept, design, and fabrication. The projects were conceived to provide the students with ample portfolio material and guidance to include their experience in college applications. Many of the mural workshop students went on to attend top tier art schools.
While working with architects on the development of Indian casinos, Ms. King-Page’s work came to the attention of LandGrant Development and C. Samuel Marasco. Marasco was renovating Clairemont Town Square shopping center – a familiar high school haunt for Kathleen. The Artist jumped at the chance to coordinate artistic enhancements for the center, giving other artists opportunities, while including several sites for her own work to shine. It was satisfying to give an aging community hub vibrant new life! Success with the Clairemont project led to similar opportunities on LandGrant’s next project, Las Americas Premium Outlets. Marasco’s confidence in King-Page’s abilities allowed the Artist to explore various mediums to achieve multicultural compositions to adorn the center’s plazas, walkways, and walls.
Meanwhile, Kathleen continued to draw, and paint on canvas, AND ride her bike. As an avid cyclist it was only a matter of time before King-Page’s love of the bike made its way onto her canvases and in 2007 the Bike Scribble was born. Endeavoring to participate with the global cycling community she accepted the invitation to paint a large canvas live at the annual Interbike convention over several years. Her distinctively stylized interpretation of the joy of bicycling has been embraced by the cycling community worldwide in murals, metal sculpture, book illustration, jewelry, apparel art, and logo design.
After completing several public projects in Colorado, King-Page got a call from The County Recreation Department in Greenville South Carolina. They were developing a Rails to Trails bike/walk trail system – The Swamp Rabbit Trail – and were interested in commissioning several large-scale, permanent artworks to decorate the route. This would be the Artist’s first opportunity to create art focused on cycling and running, in both metal sculpture, and mural form. King-Page also facilitated the installation of several works by the region’s notable artists during her 3-year stay. The trail continues to add to its art collection as the years go by and the trail expands.
In a career that spans 40 years and is only accelerating, Kathleen King-Page has designed, coordinated and executed over 130 artworks for public, commercial and private spaces in five states. The artist also has created an extensive body of work on canvas including privately commissioned pieces. She has worked in paint, metal, mosaic, clay, textiles, fiber, floral, film, theater, television, multimedia, and interior design. Many of the Artist’s public projects have become local landmarks or newsworthy events, some even creating positive changes in public art policy in several cities.
Ms. King-Page has always welcomed collaboration and favors projects that build community, educate, raise awareness, and emphasize inclusion. Her compositions are exuberant, often wildly colorful, layered with meaning and nuance. She always has an eye and ear to the political, prescient and avant-garde, giving a wink and a nod to absurdity, whimsy, and fun. All of her work is designed to ennoble the viewer, to make us LOOK UP! and inspire the celebration of simply being alive on our precious Earth, to savor the significance of our unique place and time.
