Playthings of the Wind

1199 Mason at Washington
Chinatown
Betty Ong Chinese Recreation Center

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Colette Crutcher’s mosaic mural, titled Playthings of the Wind, located in the playground of the new center, honors China’s 2000-year tradition of kite making. The mural depicts a young child, in traditional dress, holding a string attached to a butterfly kite, which is joined among the swirling clouds and sun by two other kites in the form of a “flying lizard” and bat. The mural continues onto an adjacent wall with a depiction of a dragon kite. Using a combination of stained glass, mirror, broken fragments of Chinese cookery and commercial and handmade tiles, Crutcher captures the kites’ simple, yet fanciful, geometric forms that make it possible for them to defy gravity.

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