Public Art | Public Artworks by Robin Murez

Missouri Tall Grass

A sculptural installation on the riverfront, just upstream from the Gateway Arch 1999

Woman standing near tall stone arches, sculptures.

Downtown Beautification Award . Downtown St Louis, Inc 1999

12 Blades 5' - 10' tall by 5" tapered diameters, steel reinforced concrete with glass and mirror mosaic

As the dense forests of the East gave way to the Tall Grass Prairie, pioneers were able to traverse, homestead, and cultivate the land. Thus St. Louis' distinction as the "Gateway to the West." Today, the Tall Grass Prairie, its natural resources and native animals are endangered. This installation sparkles and glistens, like an abstract sea of Missouri Tall Grass.

The Cha Cha Cha

People observing artwork on paved walkway.

Napa Valley Riverfront, Napa, California 2011

People's Choice Award 2013

I sculpted The Cha Cha Cha in response to Napa's call for Kinetic Art. My mapping of dance steps elicits memories, inspires rhythm and engages passersby to create their own kinetic motion: to dance.

1/4" stainless steel, polished & engraved x 4' wide x 6' long mounted flush on the city sidewalk for pedestrians to discover and dance

I installed a similar Cha Cha Cha in Houston, TX and painted multiple Dance Steps in Venice, CA

DANCE ART DONATED TO DOWNTOWN’S RIVERFRONT

A little cha-cha-cha, anyone?

J.L. Sousa/Register
Using stainless steel feet embedded in the sidewalk as her guide, Sarah Mulhall of Chicago attempts to dance the cha-cha-cha in September 2013 as her fiance Tom De Weerdt takes her photo. This artwork has been donated to the Riverfront by artist Robin Murez. J.L. Sousa/Register

All day, every day, people strolling along Main Street in front of the Riverfront suddenly pause, then attempt a little cha-cha-cha.
For this, you can credit Robin Murez, the Southern California artist who three years ago embedded stainless steel footsteps, with diagrammatic instructions, on how to do the infectious Cuban dance.
Pedestrians can’t resist the dance steps, Murez said. “It gets people moving and it is moving in ways spiritual and fun,” she said.
Her work, titled “Cha Cha Cha,” was originally installed as part of Napa ARTwalk — a temporary exhibit of public art scattered throughout downtown Napa. It won that year’s People’s Choice Award.
When the exhibit’s two-year run was over, every artist was expected to remove their work to make room for a new crop of art, but Murez wanted “Cha Cha Cha” to remain.
Murez has created public art for numerous California communities, but few works have achieved the crowd-pleasing success of “Cha Cha Cha,” with its ability to inject a moment of silly pleasure into the lives of passersby, she said.
Her dance steps seem particularly fitting for downtown Napa, which she described as a “sophisticated tourist destination.”
Murez said she wanted to donate “Cha Cha Cha” so it could stay in Napa permanently, but ran into several bureaucratic hurdles. For one, the rules for Napa ARTwalk required removal after two years so new works can be installed.
In September, Murez said she came up to Napa with power tools and prepared to remove “Cha Cha Cha,” only every time she walked back to her vehicle, passersby intruded into her work zone and started doing the moves.
Then Marie Lyall emerged from Scott Lyall Shoes at the Riverfront and pleaded with her to stop.
“I didn’t know the legal logistics,” Marie Lyall said. “I was going straight from the heart as a merchant.”
“It’s an attraction,” she said of “Cha Cha Cha.” “Everyone who passes it — pretty much every single person — stops and tries to figure out what it is.”
“The funny thing is to watch it after 9 o’clock (at night) after all the wine people have had. It’s hysterical.”
Lyall’s advocacy helped secure the retention of “Cha Cha Cha.” Murez said she donated the work to the Riverfront and agreed to indemnify everyone in case there were ever a liability issue.
Mayor Jill Techel said she’s a big fan of “Cha Cha Cha,” succumbing to its lure whenever she walks by. “I need those metal footprints to make it happen,” she said.

Abstract mirrored reflections with silhouetted figures.

City Museum

Oakland Zoo

Francis Park

Anamorphic Portraits

Camel Topiaries

Winged Lion

Thaumatrope Coin Toss

Zoetrope

Peep Hole Box

Blue dollar signs scattered on pavement.

Canals Overlay

Artistic green-toned face mural outdoors

Wheat Pastings

Tillis Park

Venice Ball Parks

Laumeier Pods

Canine sculpture on architectural structure

Saluki's

Labyrinth

The Venice Labyrinth

This is one of my Venice Neighborhood Ball Parks: the transformation of a blighted site in Venice into beautiful, interesting, safe & enjoyable neighborhood space.

For this site, owned by the adjacent church, the serene spiritual path fits conceptually and the in-ground form meets practical needs. Painting the church restored it's historic Craftsman style. The Mosaic Ball is both sculptural seating and a neighborhood marker.

Community, private & corporate involvement & funding 2010

Venice Labyrinth Has Some Churchgoers Balking At Circles

By Martha Groves, Los Angeles Times
May 4, 2010 12 AM PT

VENICE, APR. 28, 2010. Venice artist Robin Murez created a labyrinth on a lot owned by the Bethel Tabernacle Church of God in Christ. A church with a small, elderly congregation in Venice on Apr. 28, 2010. (Photo by Lawrence K. Ho/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)

With its burned-out lawn and overgrown bushes, the corner lot next to Bethel Tabernacle Church in Venice struck sculptor Robin Murez as ripe for resurrection.

So Murez laid plans to turn the church-owned lot into a pocket park with an in-ground labyrinth, where neighbors could gather to chat, and aging churchgoers could park cars there during suppers and Bible study.

“A labyrinth is a very serene place made for spiritual meditation,” Murez said. “The neighborhood needs some healing. The site looked like a scar.”

After months of plotting and planting, the Oakwood Labyrinth at 6th and San Juan avenues was officially unveiled on Saturday — World Labyrinth Day.

Volunteers worked to build the decorative maze with concrete core samples, each of which was 12 inches tall and 6 inches in diameter and buried flush with the turf. Having personally invested hundreds of unpaid hours and thousands of dollars’ worth of materials, Murez speaks of the project with a mixture of exhaustion and pride.

But the lawyer-turned-artist has learned something about the community she thought she knew so well: Even if one’s aim is to improve an area that needs improving, not everyone will be thrilled with the results.

Although passers-by and many neighbors are delighted by the change, the dozen or so elderly churchgoers (oldest member: 94) remain divided on the merits.

“My neighbors told me it was a pagan-type thing,” said Carol Powell, a member who lives a few blocks from the church. “My concern is you don’t walk in a circle. You come inside the church to worship.”

In a neighborhood that has long struggled with gentrification, where million-dollar homes and quirky architectural wonders rise beside peeling bungalows, Murez’s offers of help met with some suspicion.

Pastor Harold G. Smith, who said he feels OK about the labyrinth, said some people have had “some problems with understanding its significance. But I need to help them understand that even if you don’t necessarily like it, you do need to appreciate people doing good things for you for free.”

Murez first broached the labyrinth idea last summer with Sammie Moore, or “Mother Moore,” as Bethel’s members call her. Moore was cleaning the church one Saturday when Murez cycled by.

Murez, who has long maintained a studio and outdoor sculpture garden on Abbot Kinney Boulevard, told Moore about her desire to create public green spaces.

“Robin has a special spirit,” Moore said, “and I was drawn to the idea.”

Moore and Smith said they have done their best to explain to the congregation the concept of a labyrinth as a path for personal, psychological and spiritual transformation. After all, one of the most famous prayer labyrinths, dating from about 1200, is embedded in the floor at Chartres Cathedral near Paris.

But Smith acknowledged that some church members remain confused. Since the labyrinth’s recent completion, he said, feedback has been “nil, zero, zilch.” Meanwhile, church member Powell said she was upset to learn recently that dancing would be part of the opening festivities.

The church got more than it expected out of the arrangement. A block away sits the green Craftsmanstyle house that Venice developer Abbot Kinney bequeathed to his African American chauffeur, Irving Tabor. With that for inspiration, Murez and volunteers painted the beige Craftsman-style church in several complementary shades of green.

Local plumbers, nurseries and stores provided laborers and pitched in with paint, queen palms and an automated sprinkler system.

Alyson Horn, who lives across the street, said the labyrinth “creates a feeling of community and … actually ends up making the area safer. It changes the energy.”

Next door, sculptor Woods Davy initially raised a fuss when landscape architects urged Murez to remove a tree that provided a privacy screen. Murez trimmed it instead, and Davy now says the freshly painted church is “absolutely beautiful.”

Martha Groves who covered the Westside for the Los Angeles Times, left the newsroom in 2015. A native Hoosier, she became a Metro reporter after many years as a Business writer and editor. She previously worked for the Philadelphia Inquirer and the late, lamented Chicago Daily News.