MAKING THE NAPA

Quake Mosaic

By Kathleen Reynolds

“There’s something satisfying about taking broken things and putting them in some sort of order after a disaster,” says Kristina Young, artist and designer of the Napa Quake Mosaic, an ambitious, community-driven mosaic.

“After the 2014 earthquake, I was working at the fine craft Grand Hand Gallery on Main Street. Everything was smashed and as we were cleaning it up, I realized that this was people’s art, and I didn’t feel comfortable just throwing it away. I’m also a mosaic artist, so I would save broken pieces all the time. I had a group of five friends and other artists, and we talked about how we could use the broken objects that people had saved.”

She had a community-build concept to use the pieces to create a mosaic and organized a drop-off point. Even when volunteers were simply sorting the broken objects by color, Kristina says it was therapeutic.

“It gave them a sense of purpose. There’s something about calm repetitive activity that has a soothing effect on people. They would always say, “You don’t understand, but this is helping me right now. It’s not even about the earthquake; it’s about something else; health or a divorce or family stuff.” It’s what propelled it all of these years, it’s all the people involved from the beginning.”

The mosaic took 11 years and over 2000 volunteers to create.“Not to say that I didn’t almost give up many times. There were quite a few points over the last decade that I couldn’t find a home for it, or have funding, couldn’t manage doing this and my own work at the same time. There was a lot of effort and stamina required to keep it going. I felt the burden of responsibility to all the original donors that I had their memories in my care.”

At the time, Kristina volunteered with the Vine Trail Art Committee, which became the Rail Arts District (RAD). The Wine Train wanted to partner with her and RAD and donated a box car to display the final product. The approximate weight of the finished mosaic, including the frame, is 6,000 pounds and it measures 10’ wide and 40’ long. The box car weighs 80,000 pounds and is sturdy enough to hold such a piece.

Through RAD Director Shelly Willis, Kristina got in touch with artist Amanda Larson and her father Bill who designed and built the framework for the mosaic.

“We raised the money, because I was determined to pay the artists and the technical expertise that we needed,” says Kristina. “But, basically, it’s been a volunteer effort. Shelly estimated that it is a $350,000 project that we did for $150,000. That’s to give you an idea of how much time people put into this: their hours, their expertise and in-kind support. It’s just amazing to see how many people stepped up.”

“As for the design, I tend to work in response to a site. I think about what the site needs and how the people who will be interacting with it would respond. I knew I wanted to do something that was simple in design, because I wanted the community to be able to be involved. I was waiting for the site to tell me what it wanted. Once the box car was officially donated by the Wine Train, I saw the design in my mind. It’s a core sample of the earth, sitting on the earth. It’s as if you took a section of the earth and you’re looking at it. It’s layers of dirt and rock and water. All the things under the ground, minerals and metals and all the things that are there.”

Pieces of broken mirrors represent the earthquake itself with waves of impact radiating from the center. The mirrors sparkle and stand out.

“I wanted volunteers to keep pieces as whole as possible, because I wanted people to be able to find their objects again. I wanted to honor the objects’ integrity. My friend Evy Warshaski gave us tubs of her broken ceramic collection that contained a lot of clay flowers. I kept those intact, so it became more of a three-dimensional object instead of a flat mosaic. It made the grouting process very challenging.”

The mosaic was unveiled to the public in August of this year. What did Kristina get out of the project?

“I have learned so much about community building, how to work together on projects with volunteers and people who step up. It made me feel connected to this community in a way that I hadn’t felt before. Probably most of the people who worked on it wouldn’t consider themselves artists and I love that I could facilitate that kind of experience. After the two fires we had, people also donated burned, melted or broken objects. I liked the idea of taking those experiences and allowing people to be part of something that helped them heal. The fact that it helped people in so many other ways was something I hadn’t anticipated.”

The boxcar is placed in the Wine Train yard near Soscol Avenue for now. It is visible, and accessible to people.“Eventually, we want it to be permanently installed in the RAD, off the tracks, and we’re working on a couple of possibilities with the city. Ultimately, I want it to be owned by the city, so it’s  maintained by the public. As wonderful as the Wine Train is, I don’t want anyone to have that (maintenance) burden. I can’t wait for people to see and enjoy it and try to find the thing they gave.”

Kristina says the project opened up professional opportunities for her that she hadn’t imagined.

“If someone had told me 11 years ago that I’d still be working on this, I would have laughed. At that point, I still had another job. I have my own company now doing public art and mosaic with a lot of community build projects. I hadn’t seen that as a career path at the beginning.”

What does Kristina want the public to understand?

“So many times, art is thought of as a nice but unnecessary extra or just for rich people. It’s not. To me, it’s how I function every day; I don’t see it as a separate activity at all. A working creative sector is a very important part of a heathy community. I want artists to have that respect and that place here in Napa. Not just as an extra nice thing to have.”

How did the volunteers and community benefit?

“Public art is a democratic experience that people get for free,” says Kristina. “It can become a landmark, it can become a touchstone, it can become a place for people to sit, relax and process or enjoy something unusual in their day that might give them a sense of joy, wonder or curiosity.”

“This project is not about the earthquake. I want them to think about what we did afterwards. I want them to think about how amazing this community is. They’re part of it. It’s about placing our community in time. We are only here on this earth for a certain amount of time, what do we do with that time and how can we support each other? How can we support creativity and collaboration and what’s possible when you work together? It’s not about me or any individual. It’s about this collective statement of resilience and community and allowing creative people to have the time and space to make those projects together.”