COVINGTON — Just as in an old-fashioned quilting bee, dozens of volunteers have come together here to create an artistic vision reflective of their community.

        This Friday, the scenes of community life that make up Covington's Millennium Mosaic will be on display at a reception at the Duveneck Art Center, 1230 Greenup St.

        About 130 Covington landmarks on glass tile mosaic backgrounds will be on display at the 5 to 8 p.m. reception at the former Klingenberg's Hardware Store. Clay houses, churches, schools and businesses about the thickness of a pancake and 3 to 5 inches long will grace five 3-foot-tall, black concrete benches.

        The benches will be placed in Park Place Square, tentatively slated for completion by 2002, said City Manager Greg Jarvis. The park will include the area bounded by Greenup, Scott and Fourth streets and the police memorial just north of Third Street.

        “This mosaic is one way of telling (the volunteers') attachment to Covington and their love for its historic homes,” said Jean St. John, the sponsoring Covington Community Center's arts coordinator.

        Even when the volunteers' work ends this week, many hope to form a club to work with mosaics.

        In December, Olivia Gude, the Chicago artist and educator who has guided Covington's Millennium Mosaic project for the past three months, and Eddie Bourbon, a master tile set ter from Chicago, will return to install the mosaic tiles on the benches.

        But Ms. Gude — praised by the project's volunteers for her creative insight and constructive criticism — said the true credit for the community mosaic lies with its many volunteers.

        Since late August, local volunteers ages 13 to 82, including many with no artistic backgrounds, have spent hundreds of hours discussing what their community means to them, sketching and painting Covington landmarks, and fashioning scenes of community life with vibrant glass tiles smaller than a fingernail.

        Among them: rehabber Carol Gastright, 58, who had the inspiration to add a spring cleanup scene, complete with a refrigerator and armchair on a sidewalk in front of a partially painted house; visual artist Betty Burns, 77, of Latonia; and Jackie Slone, 54, of Wallace Woods, who divides her time between the mosaic project and her art studio in Over-the-Rhine.

        Mary E. Massey of the Dixie Porcelain Painters, the group that painted most of the clay buildings on the mosaic, said the experience has been a welcome diversion from her husband's battle with cancer.

        “It's just delightful to be here among these artists,” the 72-year-old Anderson Township woman said Tuesday. “They keep me laughing. They are all so encouraging, and Olivia (Gude) is just a super, super instructor.”

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