Click for larger photo

Frank Matranga's View Park Library mural graces the exterior entryway to the library. Composed in muted earth tones in ceramic and glass tile, the piece features a variety of curvilinear forms with a strong sense of verticality. The bulbous shapes evoke expressions of the sea and call to mind the forms of sea creatures like clams, mussels and jellyfish. A metal gate now divides the mural.

See
Frank Matranga, Diamond Bar Library
Frank Matranga, La Cañada Flintridge Library
Frank Matranga, La Verne Library
Frank Matranga, Lloyd Taber Marina Del Rey Library
Frank Matranga, Masao W. Satow Library

About the Artist: Frank Matranga received his BA and MA from California State University Los Angeles. While working on his MA, he was offered a job teaching ceramics at a local high school. This led him to discover a lifelong love affair with clay. He completed his master's degree in art and later studied at the University of Southern California under Carlton Ball. In 1961, he started his own ceramic studio in Redondo Beach (later moved to Manhattan Beach) and began to teach in the Los Angeles Community College system, which he would do for the next twenty years.

His public art career began in 1970 when Sears, Roebuck, and Company commissioned him to create seven murals for Sears stores in the southern California area. In the following decades he has completed over 50 ceramic mural commissions for libraries, private companies, and homes. In 1977 and 1979, he was invited to be an artist in residence in Japan, where he exhibited at the American Embassy Gallery in Tokyo. His work has also been shown in Australia and Germany.

Back