Watsonville Brillante
When completed Watsonville Brillante will be a 12,500 square ft. community-built mosaic (1200 square ft. every six months)
Completed: 7000 square feet to date
Phase 1 April 2020 “Strawberry Piker” 20’ x 60’
Phase 2 November 2020 “Apple Picker” 20’ x 60’
Phase 3 and 4 November 2021 “Hermanita” 40’ x 60’
Phase 5 May 2022 “The Asian Flower Grower” 16’ x 50’ and 16 horizontal sections
Phase 6 December 2022 Thirty horizontal sections
Projected:
Phase 7 July 2023 Thirty horizontal sections
Phase 8 December 2023 Thirty horizontal sections
Phase 9 May 2024 Thirty horizontal sections
Phase 10 December 2024 Thirty horizontal sections
Site-Specific & Architectural Art Segment (Site-Specific Mosaic)
720 x 1392
Materials List
Ceramic Tile
Installation Location
Civic Parking Garage, Rodriguez and Second St., Watsonville, CA
Collaborating Artist/Fabrication Team
Juan Fuentes designer of "The Strawberry Picker", "The Apple Picker", "Hermanita", and "The Asian Flower Grower"
Horizontal sections designed by 120 local community artists, including 105 youth.
Installation by Rinaldi Tile and Marble
Fabrication by the community: 3077 volunteer hours by 502 individuals to date.
Artist Statement
When completed Watsonville Brillante will be a 12,500 square ft. community-built mosaic (1200 square ft. every six months). To make this dream a reality I started a non-profit organization: “Community Arts & Empowerment”. Our Mission is “to make art for, by and with the public, to build community identity, pride and connections through public art projects.
Our process encourages the community to spend time with each other defining their social and physical identities. We teach and learn new skills together for the benefit of all; transforming physical space into a magical place. 6000 of the 12,500 square feet we are covering are in 4 vertical sections. We decided to use the verticals to represent the people of Watsonville by featuring the faces of the ordinary regular people who live here as depicted in woodblock carvings by Juan Fuentes.
The horizontal sections represent the cultural heritages of people who have lived or do live in Watsonville. We wrote a curriculum for high school youth and received 390 submissions for the horizontal sections. 120 artists have been paid stipends for the use of their images, 105 of them are youth artists.
In spite of COVID we have been engaging with our community for the past three years and have completed 6 of the 10 phases. Our expected completion date is December 2024.
In addition to the empowering mosaic skills, youth learn while creating public art for their town we are empowering the community with our image choices. We are an agricultural town, 85% of our residents are of Mexican descent. We are changing the archetype of public art, these are not the typical public art images of the “fathers of our county”, we are depicting our friends and neighbors, and you literally have to look up to them.
