Robin A. Brailsford is a renowned public artist in California, celebrated for her innovative and community-engaged approach to public art. Her work often integrates natural and urban landscapes, creating site-specific installations that resonate with their environments. Brailsford is a pioneer in using LithoMosaic, a technique she co-developed, which allows for the intricate embedding of mosaic tiles into concrete. This method has been widely acclaimed for its durability and aesthetic versatility. Brailsford has completed numerous high-profile projects throughout her career, including transit stations, parks, and public buildings, reflecting her commitment to enhancing public spaces through art. Her installations are not only visually striking but also foster a sense of place and community identity, making her a significant figure in the field of public art.
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Highlighted PUBLIC ART Projects
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A 2500 foot LithoMosaic in collaboration with Walter Munk and Scripps Institute of Oceanography of the life and science of the deep sea canyons in La Jolla Cove.
Our third big project for Long Beach Transit. This one is for the battery-operated electric bis station at the Long Beach Convention Center. As we have an Aquarium of the Pacific aspect to all the work for the LBT, and these buses are electric, and 7 deep ocean trenches are off of Long Beach - all the tondos depict Deep Sea, biol-luminescent life.
Star Streams / Threshold Tessellation exemplifies the community and regional character of Escondido as a cultural anchor for San Diego County and the California Center for the Arts. It exemplifies broad possibilities for the diverse communities it has attracted for over a hundred years.
This is the third project we have done for Long Beach Transit. They consider our LithoMosaics as part of the LBT branding. For this site, at the tip of Alamitos Bay, where their buses meet their Aqualink water taxis, the San Gabriel River meets the Pacific Ocean and the Pacific Flyby passes Long Beach, we designed a work that thinks about schooling and flocking of sea life and air life.
This was an amazingly designed project, by Mia Lehrer LA, in the amount that she got into a small site with a steep slope. The bench tops cast in LithoMosaic are superb work of engineering - with stepped AND curving tops, AND set within a steep slope. The project is in Echo Park, a barrio in Los Angeles very near the Disney Concert Hall, Broad and Contemporary Art Museum, and the Cathedral of Los Angeles.
Two platforms, 270' long for the Foothills Gold Line of the Los Angeles METRO system, ten years from awarding the contract to completion!
"Stream of Consciousness/Body of Water" embraces the reservoir and enhances the public interpretation of this facility's post 9/11 high-security campus.
The site is long and narrow, wedged within a tight neighborhood of working families, art aficionados, actors and homeless teens. Arts and Crafts homes are to the left of the park, 60’s classic LA apartments to the right of it. And down the street, leading to the fame, tourists and excitement of Hollywood Boulevard, are lines of statuesque Washingtonia palm trees – hundreds of feet tall.
Desert National Wildlife Refuge Visitors Center, Las Vegas, Nevada. Paiute Directionals - for the largest NWR I the continental United States,a 300 Lithocrete river, and two 10' LithoMosaic medallions based on Pima images, for the new Corn Creek Visitor's Center, which just won a LEED Platinum designation. Designs by DNWR Interpretive Specialist.
Lemon Grove, CA, Pioneer Modernism Park, Team: Brailsford and Alexander of BPA, KTU A: Kimley-Horn lead. Three blocks long: cyclic patterns in time, color, transit, and water-inspired. At the Victorian depot, Aeromotor spins, LithoMosaic fruit-crates seat, and kids animate the red tractor slide. Midpoint, a Kiss and Ride plaza is dotted with LithoMosaic lemon slices and seasonal stream, and an illuminated solar tree. At the far end, near a modern housing estate, our vertical wind turbine atop a reflective anamorphic fulcrum is circled by a futuristic LithoMosaic plaza.
LONG BEACH TRANSIT GALLERY, Long Beach, California. AhHa! Shoreline Stroll, with MIG Landscape Architects, Eli Noar Architecture, and Brailsford Public Art collaborators Wick Alexander and Bhavna Mehta, 3000 square feet of LithoMosaic at eight bus transit stops over four contiguous blocks in downtown LB. At the terminus of the Metro Blueline and within walking distance of the Long Beach Aquarium.
The landscape architect had designed an Escher Park.. he .proposed these large lizards in solid colors... we have collaborated for the NFS with a biologist from the University of Nevada Las Vegas.... and thought they could be much more than first conceived. The biologist brought indigenous lizards to the park, we photographed them and made these lizard portraits - transforming the park into interpretation as well as fun.
The most exciting of dream projects...to spend a month living on a 12,000' mountain range, an hour from Las Vegas, thinking the biggest of big thoughts with a superb team of scientists, oral historians, and anthropologists, with the goal to make these Spring Mountains,12 climatic zones (from the Mojave Desert to Ponderosa Pine to Bristlecone) into the most dynamic, linked forested environment, with the city and culture of Las Vegas (!) and Southern Nevada.
A big park in one of the fastest-growing cities in Texas... and they love their sports! As the town was founded about the time that the Industrial Revolution, train, photography, and leisure time all struck - amusements from that time - perception became the concept. Black and white, zoetropes a large anamorphic fulcrum in Super 8 stainless over a rustic terrazzo plaza., girls playing soccer in black and white are all part of the overall concept.
Working for a private developer in the Garment District of LA on public art for three of his properties... I brought in a postcard of a stone and glass mosaic waterfall I made for the Miramar Water Treatment Plant in San Diego, and he challenged me to make a light, 30' tall waterfall for one of his buildings.
This 11 block urban bus transit mall and our work "River of Life" explores Pacific Rim connections and includes custom shelters, Yuzen mosaics, Lithocrete intersections, and Robert Lang's origami bronzes. This project had a $13.3 million construction budget. It was dedicated on June 22, 2002.
PHOENIX ARTS COMMISSION, City of Phoenix, AZ. The 12 bus bay, Ed Pastor Transit Mall was a collaboration between myself as Lead Artist and DEA Planners and Engineers and Durant Architects. My artwork transit/urban/garden considers 10 million years of the site's natural and agricultural history and includes fountains, a Lithocrete 'river', and a 545' x 30' x 18' canopy. $3.5 million construction budget. Dedicated 2/22/03.
PUBLIC CORPORATION FOR THE ARTS. Long Beach, CA. Street Park Parable, with Jon Cichetti- landscape architect, and Frances Wosmek poet. Landscape, poetry, mosaics and reflective vinyl animals as symbols of our humanity. Project budget: $300,000. Commissioned, designed, built and installed in one year - 1997.
TRAFFIC ENGINEERING DEPARTMENT, City of San Diego, CA. Processional Passage, landscape, street paving, mosaics, and steel elements with and for high school students about the Tree of Life. Overall budget: $300,000. 1997. As with all my projects here on the CodaWorx page, all the complete projects can be seen on the Facebook LithoMosaics page. Go to FB, then LithoMosaics, then Photos, then Albums, then the named Album you are looking for.
Simon Wong Engineers brought me onto the design team for a pedestrian. equestrian and vehicular bridge over a tributary of the Tijuana River, in a National Estuarine Research reserve on the US/Mexico border. Horses need a high fence and I imagined it as a folding ribbon of color, alternations between hand enameled porcelain steel panels, and glimpses of the landscape.
Two pierced metal canopies overhead, cast light and shadow on the trains and platforms of the solar system (for how small we are) Pangea (for how all the earth is one large landmass), a turtle - for life in the oceans before man, and an orchid - for life on the earth before man. The first of my Metro stations, the line runs to Long Beach where Ah HA Shoreline Stroll greets the rider, and east on the Goldline Irwindale, where my work celebrating the Hispanic families thrive, in the Jardin De Roca.
A city logo in the heart of the city of Queen Creek, a suburb of Phoenix, this was a fun small project for the quality of the team and the richness of materials the imagery could support. Both J2 Designs and Progressive Hardscapes are some of our most frequent commissioners.
Kumeyaay native astronomer Michael Connolly knew of our work and specifically asked to work with us to create a 20’ LithoMosaic star map depicting the constellations as described by the native peoples. It is set within a large park, reclaimed from development, by State Parks as a means of recognizing the peoples and culture of the first occupants of this land at the juncture of San Diego RIver flood plains and the Pacific Ocean.
A natural playground is an adventure playground. It's kid and climate and environmentally sensitive - so no plastic or resins or toxins - but lots of trees and stumps and logs and boulders and aesthetics - all arranged with consideration for maximum fun, exercise and exploration.
Carl Leibhardt of Shapiro-Didway contacted us about creating an iconic plaza for a cultural center on the gorgeous Oregon coast in the Pacific Northwest. Located in an old schoolhouse right on the PCH, our concept, after Zoom community meetings, was solidified for a cosmography inspired by an Inuit original.
