| Artist: | Frank Matranga |
| Date: | 1977 |
| District: | Fourth Supervisorial District |
| Location: | Diamond Bar Library |
| Department: | Public Library |
 |
|
 |
This mural, outside of the main entrance to the Diamond Bar Library, is one of six that Frank Matranga created for Los Angeles County Libraries in the 1970s and 80s. It measures 9' h x 8.5' w and was installed when the Diamond Bar Library was built in 1977. Matranga conceived, designed and fabricated the mural in his studio and then delivered the tiles to the Library's site. They were installed by a professional tile setter under Matranga's supervision. The mural's forms are organic and rounded and undulate throughout the work. Inscribed in small letters on the mural's proper right side are words which comment on a library's purpose, "An educated people are a free people."
See Frank Matranga, La Cañada Flintridge Library
and Frank Matranga, Marina Del Rey Library
and Frank Matranga, Masao W. Satow Library
and Frank Matranga, View Park Library
About the Artist: Frank Matranga received his BA and MA from California State University Los Angeles. While pursuing 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 USC 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 had 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, Tokyo. His work has also been shown in Australia and Germany.