VENTURA : Local Artist’s Mosaic Unveiled at Library

Songs of brotherly love were permeating the air of Denmark in the 1960s when Helle Scharling-Todd, then a 21-year-old college student, decided to become an artist.

“It was a time of social awareness, and my work just took on this social context,” said the 45-year-old artist, a resident of Ventura for 10 years. She now specializes in mosaics and stained glass because “I like my art to be applicable to buildings. I’d rather it be in a social space where other people exist than a lonely gallery.”

Scharling-Todd’s newest mosaic, a 4-by-6-foot work in four pieces, was unveiled Saturday at the Wright Library at 57 Day Road in Ventura. More than 10,000 pieces of glass that Scharling-Todd cut from glass chunks in her Santa Paula studio are embedded in four sections of cement.

The top, in blue with streaks of yellow, represents the sky and sun, she said. The next section, sparkling green glass shaped as a leaf, stands for the organic elements of the world. The third, in many hues of blue, represents water. And the bottom piece is made of the browns and reds of earth, streaked with white lines, representing streets, the man-made elements of the world.

Scharling-Todd also has a mosaic at the Port Hueneme-Prueter Library. A stream of blue glass, embedded in the ground, eddies outside the main door and then runs into the building.

“Work has been quite slow here,” she said. “In Europe, art has always been incorporated in buildings. But here, no. Everything is so functional. There’s carpeting and desks and windows. But there’s a need for things that are more than functional.”

Scharling-Todd was given a $2,500 grant from the Ventura Arts Council last May for the library work, but she had to find matching funds. She tried car dealerships, hotels, supermarkets, all with no luck.

“It was a very humbling experience,” she said.

The artist finally turned to the Friends of the Library, which contributed the other $2,500.

“Doing it like this, you have to be an artist and in sales,” she said. “It’s very hard work. But I guess it’s the American way.”