Napa Quake Mosaic: Hibernation + Potential

What a year it’s been. I had been waiting to have firm news before posting this update. If we learned anything from 2020, it’s patience and persistence in the face of the unknown.

Ever since the original Quake Mosaic location on Soscol Avenue became part of the flood plain of the newly completed Oxbow Bypass in 2019 (and no longer viable), I have been looking for its new home. And while there have been a few potential locations suggested by the City as well as private developers, nothing has stuck yet.

So last year, once we realized that COVID would be with us for a while, I decided to box up and store the completed work until we could begin again. But before we boxed them up (thank you, Cartons and Crates!), my sweet husband Israel photographed each and every completed mosaic sections. Here are a few samples of the beautiful work completed by over 400 community members:

Section A3: an example of a “gray” area

Section L26: a black area

Section E16: blue + brown areas, part of a circle

Section H16: red + “gray” areas, part of a circle

Section L12: another “grey'“ area

Section G25: white + yellow areas, part of a circle

So not only do we have a record of each contributor’s work, we were able to lay them out digitally according to the schematic (see “Envisioning the Quake Mosaic”). Since we have finished about 95% of the mosaic sections, we can really see the design as it might look once installed. It is so exciting to see it come together as originally envisioned. 

As of today, the project is safely hibernating in storage. Hopefully one day soon it will awaken to its full spring potential. In the meantime, if anyone has a wall in downtown Napa that is publicly accessible and in need of a community-built mosaic, let me know!

Stay safe and healthy.

Envisioning the Quake Mosaic

In these four images below, you can see how the mosaic design has started to come to life.

Above: The original Quake Mosaic Design, which I gridded out and printed to scale onto 406 separate 11” x 17” sheets of paper. Then in community workshops, each artist was given one random paper ‘section’ and asked follow the colors indicated (ie, blue area on the paper = mosaic material in any blue they like). There were only two exceptions: the gray stripes in the design indicated not gray mosaic but ‘anything goes’ areas - to be filled with any mosaic donations the artist wanted; and the white circle areas were to be filled with broken mirror shards. Other than that, the rest of the decisions were up to each artist.

Above: The Quake Mosaic Schematic. Here is the design gridded into the 406 equal sections. I printed each section onto 11” x 17” sheets with the help of Frye’s Printing. I posted this schematic at every mosaic workshop. When an artist finished their 11” x 17” section, they would place an ‘X’ over it.

Above: All of the finished mosaic sections (about 390), digitally laid out on the design grid. There are still about 20 sections left to be built.

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Above: Showing the design underneath the completed sections, we can imaging what the Quake Mosaic might look like once it is completed and installed.