It all started with a beach ball.

When artist Joel Mesler was given the opportunity to create a public installation for Rockefeller Center this summer, he knew he wanted to throw a pool party, bringing the water-centric symbols that often feature in his paintings to life. What he and his studio manager, Maggie Merrell, didn’t know, however, was just how big that party would become.

As the vision for “Pool Party,” on view through July 21, moved to The Rink and beyond, the party grew and grew. Mesler began to add benches shaped like pool noodles, sculptural floaties, flags with phrases like “joy” and “love” (there are 193 of them), and a 3,000-square-foot printed vinyl “pool” floor.

“We were in the deep end when we’re only accustomed to getting our feet wet,” Mesler tells The Center Magazine, diving straight into the pool puns. “We had to literally go from dog paddling to breaststrokes, quickly.”

But when a grand opportunity like this one comes along, this two-person team believes the only thing to do is say “yes” and rise to the occasion — and so they did. “Everything about this is so supersized; there’s very little subtlety,” Mesler says.

Mesler has lived in New York for almost 20 years but was raised in Los Angeles. Pool parties were a pivotal part of his upbringing, he says, and while the kids played, the adults vied for host status while gin and tonics at the pool bar were flowing. “The good and the undercurrent of the pool party… I’d like to bring that to the East Coast,” he said, “but it wasn’t all just sunshine and pools in LA. There was a little deviousness.”

An artist known for the use of playful symbols such as the aforementioned beach balls, plus rainbows, water, banana leaves, and mylar foil balloons, Mesler acknowledges that these symbols mean something specific to him but can mean different things to others. “Water and the pool was a place where it was about discovery, but it was also about watching my mom drink too much,” he said. “So all of these elements to me have so many mixed metaphors.”

He hopes New Yorkers will stop by the pool to hang out, brighten their days, and maybe even reflect on their own memories. The whole project is interactive and built to be a space for conversation, where some can sit on a noodle with an ice cream cone while others read the flags and let them invoke emotion. “It’s a fabrication of what one would exist like at a public pool, except nobody’s getting wet,” Mesler said.

The artist says his Rockefeller Center “Pool Party” is a place he feels he can tell his own story while telling a larger story at the same time: “Hopefully it’s a place where I can clear my trauma but also give joy to other people.”

A corresponding retail shop at Rockefeller Center sells merchandise with “‘We Are the World’ vibes,” Mesler says, referencing the memorable 1985 song all about coming together, sung in a star-studded group for charity that included Michael Jackson, Lionel Richie, and Cyndi Lauper. Overall, he hopes to put good into the world and help others experience uplifting moments. Mesler says his pool is his platform to say, “Guys, life’s an inside job; let’s enjoy taking a swim for a second.”

Although it’s his first public art installation — Mesler, an art dealer turned painter, only moved into the world of sculpture relatively recently — he feels strongly that public art must serve the people. “I think public art [in NYC] needs to take into account New Yorkers,” he says. “There’s something about public art that needs to give and not take… there is a sense of, ‘interact with me and play in my pool.’ Almost like ‘The Giving Tree’… the swing on my branches, eat my apples kind of thing.”

Joel Mesler's Pool Party can be found at The Rink every day through July 21.