Kenny and Kate Rouh went to South Philadelphia last weekend and met a kindred spirit.
Isaiah Zagar, a famed artist who spent the last 40 years tiling art on more than 200 public walls, led a mosaic workshop the couple attended.
In Zagar’s Magic Gardens, the Rouhs saw Jacksonville’s future. Parks and commercial districts filled with mosaics, the kind of cultural iconography that gives a city a sense of place.
The creative duo behind RouxArts has a start. Since 2010 they have designed and installed five mural-sized mosaics in Jacksonville’s public spaces.
That includes the Southbank Riverwalk’s “Mirrored River,” a mass of blue and mirror flecks that flow across the Main Street Bridge wall. And at Hemming Park, a whimsical array of birds, butterflies and flowers that trail along a 72-foot long planter wall.
The murals aren’t just the couple’s, though. They’re Jacksonville’s.
For “Mirrored River,” 72 volunteers helped mortar, place and grout tiles, following a pattern laid out by Kate Rouh.
Volunteer efforts, even from random passersby, help to install all of Roux Art’s mosaics.
“We like to think we put the ‘public’ in public art,” Kenny Rouh said.
Sitting in their production studio in Murray Hill, a blinds-down storefront squeezed between Bombshell Beauty Salon and Soma Massage and Wellness, the couple speaks as if they are one person, finishing each other’s sentences.
Kate Rouh, a longtime elementary school art teacher, is the master designer.
Kenny Rouh, a retired Crowley Maritime executive, is the business manager, construction crew and all-around get-things-done guy.
Kate Rouh can’t remember a time when she wanted to pursue anything but art.
Her father worked at an advertising company in sales. Growing up, she pored over his copies of “Advertising Age” magazine, which contained great examples of art and graphics.
A New Jersey native, Kate Rouh studied graphic design in Gainesville. Jobs and marriage would root her in Northeast Florida.
Over the years, her artwork spanned such media as watercolor portraits of Jacksonville’s historic homes, decoupage furniture and collages of family vacations. She didn’t create her first mosaic, though, until 2010.
It was West Riverside Elementary School’s 100-year anniversary. Kate Rouh, the school’s art teacher, wanted to help commemorate it with a mural stretched along the exterior wall of the new resource center.
“I wanted to build something that would last forever,” she said. “There are 2,000- and 3,000-year-old mosaics in the Middle East they’re still uncovering.”
Kate Rouh rolled out clay and her students created tiles inspired by objects in the neighborhood — palms, oaks, a sun, dogs, houses and fish.
“One of the kids made a manta ray swimming in the river,” Kate Rouh said. “I’m not sure that’s actually there.”
Then, the students helped install it, smearing tiles with mortar and placing them on X’s Kate Rouh had drawn.
Sometimes the effort would go as late as 9 p.m.
Kenny Rouh would come after work to help. Sometimes the couple skipped dinner.
It was Kate Rouh’s first mosaic, but she immediately felt excited about it.
“After that, I was like, ‘what else can I put a mosaic on?’” she said.
The Rouhs looked for other projects and the grant money to complete them.
A gazebo at Yacht Basin Park. A mosaic of Jacksonville’s skyline, built by people attending a home and garden show.
The germ of their business idea was always to create community mosaics.
“It was the genesis of our business, really, that Kate had the skill to teach people how to participate,” Kenny Rouh said.
Kate Rouh admits it means risking that the work won’t turn out exactly as she envisioned. But that’s outweighed by the benefits.
“I really think artwork becomes worth more when more people participate, because then, more people care about it,” she said. “People get excited to be part of it, and I get a charge out of that.”
Also, the couple can accomplish a whole lot more with the community involved.
They’ll need the help if they want to catch up to Zagar.
They’ve already zeroed in on one corner of the city — the business district where their studio is located.
“If we can get buy-in from building owners and businesses, Murray Hill could become Jacksonville’s first total mosaic destination,” Kenny Rouh said. “It could happen in a very short period of time.”
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