Design of the Friendship Garden
The Cincinnati/Liuzhou Friendship Garden was realized in 2008 through a long-distance cooperation between professionals from both cities as a celebration of twenty years of cultural exchange within the context of the CinLiu Sister Cities relationship. Design and operations partners in Liuzhou’s beautiful LongTan Park cooperated with a probono design committee in Cincinnati to conceive of and develop the garden. The Cincinnati team included project manager Gerald Checco, founding co-sponsor and cultural facilitator Beth Tu Hoffman, Human Nature, Kolar Design, Jim Fearing, Dewey Hollister, and Jan Brown Checco. Jan’s exchange artist partner was He Zhenhai of Nanning. Each artist created a mosaic inlay for the two main plazas in the garden design. Other notable features were replicas of the Roebling Bridge and Eden Park Gazebo. The garden was dedicated in November 2008 with a colorful celebration in the garden that included a re-signing of the agreement of relationship between Cincinnati and Liuzhou, attended by a Cincinnati mayoral delegation of 80 travelers to China.
Jans’s Plaza Mosaic: “Ohio River Valley Portrait” (2008) The high places (spirals), low places, forests, fields and rivers (the blue bands) are overlain with man’s imprint of habitation and use. This basic “portrait” of the face of our homeland has not changed since the time when the only inhabitants were Native Americans. The beautiful face of Cincinnati bears the marks of our collective creative energy.
