Watsonville Brillante is the 12,500 square foot project that took 5 years to complete. Kathleen started the non-profit organization Community Arts & Empowerment to fund the project and to create the Muzzio Mosaic Arts Center where Kathleen teaches and mentors the youth of the community in the art of mosaics.
Mayan Warrior, is the first of four anchor images translated into mosaics from woodblock prints by the artist Juan Fuentes. This section took six moths to complete and was installed by Kathleen and a crew from Rinaldi Tile and Marble.
Here is a quote about this image from Juan Fuentes:
Mayan Warrior, is a woodcut. The main image represents a young man picking strawberries. That young man could have been me, but also many others. I wanted to represent the present and the past, so I added the Mayan deity on top and it holds onto a farmworker eagle and their struggle for workers rights led by Cesar Chavez. On the top left corner is the symbol for the four directions from New Mexico, where I was born. This represents our cultural past in Mexico and present lives in the U.S. Separating the two figures is a barbed wire, representing the border between Mexico and the U. S. My own family was divided with relatives on both sides of the border.
