100 Families Community Mural at Highland Hospital

After about ten months of planning, art workshops,digital painting, and community involvement, Joaquin Newman and Eduardo Pineda have just installed 43 digitally printed murals at Highland Hospital in Oakland. These murals will grace the barrier fence around the Alameda County Medical Center's Acute Care Tower rehabilitation site for the remainder of this major demolition and construction.

 

The Alameda County Arts Commission awarded Joaquin and Eduardo with this project after the competitive selectionprocess unveiled the duo's talent and experience in working with diverse groups to create imagery around shared beliefs and community visions.

 

The first phase of the 100 Families Project was in the form of art workshops with neighbors of the hospital where multi-generational families participated in hands-on activities, sharedmeals, and created collaged "homes" from textiles, photos, prints, and found imagery. These homes were intended to represent a families self-image and visions for their community.

 

After workshop artworks were photographed, participant portraits were captured by amazing photographer Sibila Savage during our movement workshops led by Bay Area performer Rosa Gonzalez. These figurative and artistic images were then combined with lush and verdant scenery, underwater scenes, and space-scapes to create digital murals that were to be printed and installed on site.

 

Following approval from the Arts Commission, and feedback from various community members, the final artworks were sent to VisionIsle printers in San Leandro who made these great digital images into amazing printed artworks. On April 5th, Eduardo and Joaquindirected a crew of Union Carpenters to install the murals at the Hospital Site. It went off without a hitch!

 

There will be a small gathering for the participating families on Saturday, April 9 from 10:00 am – 11:00 am to view the mural with the artists. We will meet at the main entrance to the hospital and walk around together to view the mural. (Please note that we are planning a community celebration around the mural for a later date in May or June. Our get-together on Saturday will be an opportunity to view the mural in a smaller group)

 

If you'd like to see more of the images, please check out the Picasa photo album, or visit the site!