CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Westward-pointing arrows. A W and a V nestled together, crudely rendered but recognizable as the WVU Flying WV logo. Two elongated pooches, in honor of the annual wiener dog races and their founder, Libby Ballard.

Karen Garnes has collected about 30 of these designs so far, glazed onto shiny 6-inch-square ceramic tiles. She keeps them at Capitol Clay Arts Co., the pottery studio she and her husband run on the West Side.

They're among nearly 500 tiles that will be assembled this fall into a mural, about 30 feet long, 6 feet high, and mounted on a concrete retaining wall beside West Washington Street near Bream Street.

The public art project is sponsored by the West Side Main Street Program, which secured $20,000 in grants from the Sustainable Kanawha Valley Initiative and the Greater Kanawha Valley Foundation. The group hired area artists like Garnes and Rob Cleland to pull it off.

A Main Street committee chose several artists to design six 3-by-4-foot images that will serve as the main focus of the mural. Garnes is helping community members create hundreds of tiles that will form borders around the six central images.

"I was teaching the Creative Capers camp at the Universalist Congregation at the end of July," she said. "They were the first group to produce tiles."

She brought the supplies to the camp and set the first- through sixth-graders loose.

Some kids needed some prodding. "We suggested pointing west." The mural theme is Go West. "So we got a lot of arrow themes. We let them run with it.

"They put the underglaze directly on pre-fired tiles. Depending on the individual, you can easily do it in 10 minutes or an hour."

West Side Main Street director Pat McGill said more tile-making sessions are planned next month - kids from the Bob Burdette center, grownups at a business after-hours event. "The other site we're trying to book is the Tiskelwah Center, and the last will be OctoberWest, on Oct. 2."

The goal is to get all age groups involved, including seniors, Garnes said. "I have glazes, will travel."

Michael Garnes puts the finishing touches on each tile. He sprays on several coats of clear top-glaze, then fires the tiles in an electric kiln at 1,945 degrees for 12 hours. Twenty-four to 36 hours later, the tiles are cool enough to remove.

The shiny surface will help protect the tiles from weather and marks, he said, but they'll still be vulnerable to impact.

Cleland, chosen to design four of the central panels, is about halfway there.

He will also create the tiles for the other two central panels, which were designed by the late Jeff Miller.

"To be selected, you had to present a concept," Cleland said. "His [Miller's] was a finished two-panel piece. I told Pat I'd be willing to do it. She asked Gina, his widow."

Gina Puzzuoli is the owner of Stray Dog Antiques on Hale Street. "According to Pat, she said she'd be fine with letting me do it."

Chris Dutch, known for his stained glass work, will attach the tiles to cement-board backing, and Stefani Andrews will weld a metal frame for the assembly.

McGill hopes the work will be finished and mounted this fall. "We'd like to get it up before the weather gets too cold, so we're kind of targeting mid-October."

Reach Jim Balow at ba...@wvgazette.com">ba...@wvgazette.com or 304-348-5102.