The Napa Quake Mosaic, a collaborative public art project created to honor those affected by the 2014 Napa earthquake, is launching a crowdfunding campaign to complete the installation in downtown Napa.
The project was initiated with a grant from the Napa County Arts & Culture Fund.
The Napa Quake Mosaic project manager and lead artist, Kristina Young, began collecting broken items from Napa neighbors just after the dust settled from the 6.0 earthquake. Some residents delivered multiple bins of fragments and shards of former belongings. “These objects were important to people’s lives,” Young said. “They couldn’t keep them, but they couldn’t throw them away, either.”
Since that time, Young has worked to coordinate the donations, sorting, and assembly of the 14- by-20-feet mosaic mural, which will be installed on a disused rail car donated by the Napa Valley Wine Train. Once completed, the Quake Mosaic will become part of RAD Napa (the Rail Arts District) on Soscol Avenue below Vallejo Street.
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Sections of the mural were made by many hands, through studio workshops with groups like Nimbus Arts, Teens Connect, New Technology High School, Arts Council Napa Valley, Mentis and over 1,000 individual volunteers. Now, the 406 sections must be mounted and grouted, then attached to the rail car. The site must be cleaned and landscaped to create a space along Napa’s Vine Trail for visitors to stop and enjoy the project. Young needs to raise $15,000 to cover installation and landscaping costs.
“The idea of the mosaic is that, after it’s completed, you can go and sit in reflection,” Young says. “You can find your object that you contributed or section you made and think about what home means and what we can do to connect with our community.”
The mosaic also contains items recovered from the 2017 North Bay wildfires to extend the healing potential of this important project. “We all live with the threat and reminders of natural disaster,” Young said. “I hope this project will continue to help people who experience this kind of trauma.”
To contribute to the completion of the Napa Quake Mosaic, donors can give tax-deductible gifts at: https://www.gofundme.com/the-napa-quake-mosaic.
As the fiscal sponsor Nimbus Arts will receive 10 percent of every donation to support their work in building community through the arts.