Watsonville Brillante

 

Watsonville Brillante is a 12,500-square-foot community-fabricated mosaic installed across multiple surfaces in downtown Watsonville, California — the largest community mosaic project in California history. Over several years, hundreds of Watsonville community members participated in its design and fabrication, with particular involvement from immigrant families, youth, and first-generation artists.

Watsonville Brillante is located in downtown Watsonville, California, and covers 12,500 square feet on the three faces of the six-floor parking garage next to the Civic Plaza. The first tile was placed in September of 2019 and in spite of COVID and other delays along the way, the final installation took place 5 years later in September of 2024. Materials include ceramic tile and glass, and it was fabricated by over 100 members of the local community. The designs were created by 120 local artists, 105 of whom were high school students when they submitted their designs. 

Knowing that so many designers from different cultural backgrounds and aesthetic training could produce a chaotic overall effect, I planned to have all large vertical designs created by a single artist. I wanted these images to be bold, black-and-white compositions that would provide a visual rest from the variety of patterns and colors planned for the horizontal sections. The obvious choice was Juan Fuentes, a 1969 graduate of Watsonville High School who built his own distinguished career through more than four and a half decades of printmaking and his print studio, Pajaro Editions, in the Mission District of San Francisco. Juan’s images — “The Mayan Warrior (The Strawberry Picker),” “en el Cielo (The Apple Picker),” “Hermanita,” and “In the Garden (The Asian Flower Grower)” — each tell a story about the agricultural roots of Watsonville.

To make the project a reality, we established the nonprofit Community Arts and Empowerment (CA&E), and a board of directors has overseen the organization and its projects since the spring of 2019. The budget grew substantially from the original projection of $1.5 million to $2.2 million when a paid intern program was established. Watsonville Brillante has been funded almost entirely through private donations. The City of Watsonville has leased the Muzzio Mosaic Arts Center to Community Arts and Empowerment for $1 a year — a contribution valued at $300,000. The building had sat largely unused for over 10 years before CA&E occupied the space, because the City did not have funding for programming. In addition to the monumental mosaic the City is receiving, CA&E provides youth programming at the Muzzio Mosaic Arts Center through its ongoing work. The value of that programming is estimated at $200,000 a year in salaries, utilities, insurance, and programming costs. CA&E received one grant from the Arts Council of Santa Cruz for $2,000, representing less than 1% of the total budget.

Significant donations have come in the form of business partnerships. Rinaldi Tile and Marble, based in Pajaro, donated all installation labor. Fireclay, a B-certified corporation with a factory in Aromas, provided 80% of the tiles; the remainder came from Daltile. All installation materials — from the waterproofing membrane to thinset, grout, and tile sealer — are Laticrete products that were donated in full. The combined value of these in-kind donations is estimated at $900,000. These partnerships would not have been possible without the connections and generosity of Rick Rinaldi and his parents, Yvonne and Gino Rinaldi Sr.

Running a nonprofit requires cash for payroll, insurance, utilities, and other operational costs. CA&E was supported by seven Angel Donors who each gave $20,000 a year over five years. Additional donations have come in throughout our five years of operation, and we are especially grateful to those who give what they can in support of our work.