Watsonville Brillante Mural, Watsonville, CA | LATICRETE Project Spotlight

What Impact Did the Watsonville Brillante Mural Have on the Community?

An extensive demographic survey identified a total of 90 individual cultures in Watsonville, including Native American and international countries alike. Artists developed unique mosaics along the garage’s horizontal elements for each culture as well as each Mexican state. In total, 125 artists designed 185 custom mosaic panels, each oriented horizontally and measuring eight feet wide by three feet tall. In addition, four massive, vertically-oriented murals adorned the ground-to-roof wall elements.

On the building’s northwest side, a Japanese woman stands behind yellow roses. Behind her are vines that subtly form “9066,” a reference to the 1942 executive order that resulted in the incarceration of Japanese Americans.

“It is a really ugly period of history in our country,” said Crocetti. “It's important to acknowledge that we did this to our own citizens, and to honor them in this way.”

Similar homages appear on the garage’s southeast side in “The Strawberry Picker” and “The Apple Picker,” both nods to the contemporary and past laborers — often immigrants — who have made up the region’s agricultural workforce. The former depicts a border dividing a field laborer beneath an Aztec warrior, a reference to indigenous Mexican civilizations.

“There’s a barbed wire fence above the strawberry picker,” said Crocetti. “And that fence represents a border — whether that border is physical, emotional, mental, it’s however you want to interpret [it].”

The largest mural, “Hermanita,” clocks in at 2,400 square feet, which is double the size of the other vertical works. The indigenous woman portrait has dual meaning, with Crocetti noting it as “emblematic of the struggle of both women’s and cultural rights.”

“LATICRETE was privileged to be a part of Watsonville Brillante,” said Bernadette Anderson, northern California regional sales manager at LATICRETE. “Everyone has been proud to be a part of this. It’s obvious [the community] is happy to be represented. I get teary eyed because it’s such an honor to take part.”

The project is expected to continue to evolve thanks to ongoing fundraising efforts that have enabled Community Arts & Empowerment to hire local students as youth interns.

Like the spirit of those who took part and are represented in Watsonville Brillante, the mosaics themselves are poised to endure thanks to the suite of LATICRETE products used. Each individual piece is solidified in time, offering a fitting and enduring tribute to the town’s rich history.