Mosaic Design Process

For Community Invested Public Art Projects and Create Placemaking to be successful, the community itself must be engaged in the entire process—from dreaming and conceptual drawings to the dedication ceremony.

In 2017 when Kathleen began work on “Celebrating the Diversity of Labor,” it was an open ended idea. The City wanted some kind of public art in the sidewalks and Kathleen wanted community engagement. The sixteen mosaic medallions installed in downtown Watsonville are the result of over a three hundred hours of community engagement which began with open public meetings bringing the community together to learn about and from each other.

The diversity of backgrounds and similar immigrant stories lead to the concept of representing the different waves of immigration to Watsonville and the work that the newly arriving immigrants did when they arrived.

Not all of the diverse cultures that have immigrated to Watsonville are represented in the sixteen medallions. For instance, the Italians represent a European wave of immigration that included Basque, English, German, Greek, Scott, Swede and Swiss communities. The third wave of Mexicans which began in 1942, has not stopped and now includes people from all regions of Central and South America. No immigrant community past 1942 is represented, and there have been many. For this reason “Celebrating the Diversity of Labor” is an incomplete project.

The Civic Plaza Parking Garage in Downtown Watsonville offers an opportunity to complete and broaden the concept of celebrating our diversity and common experiences in Watsonville.

One of our most commonly shared experiences is that of being multi-ethnic people. Very few of us can claim to be 100% of one ethnicity or another, and most of us feel a deep sense of pride in all aspects of our heritage.

Our project Watsonville Brillante aims to represent multi-ethnic patterns of particular family units on the 185 horizontal portions of the garage’s exterior and place each family’s representation next to another family’s representation in such a way that their common heritages overlap with a shared visual pattern. Combined, they will represent our community as a whole.

The four large vertical spaces on the garage will be single images. Renowned artist, Juan Fuentes, former Watsonville resident and alumni of Watsonville High School, is honored to have us use his images for this project. We selected four pieces of his work which were enlarged and fabricated into mosaics. Please see the Juan Fuentes tab to read the story on how we chose him for this project.

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