I started planning this mosaic at least a year ago when immigration was still making headlines. I began work on the mosaic itself in early June, and just completed it on July 24. I had put off starting the mosaic because I didn’t have a clear vision for the background. But as I worked on the statue, the rest slowly came to me.
The statue is made of stained glass, all from my scrap bin. I fabricated this mosaic on clear glass and used clear textured glass for the background in a somewhat chaotic pattern to represent both radiating energy and fractures. Behind the whole mosaic is a collage of images reflecting the story of immigration in the U.S.
At the bottom I included maps of the U.S. prior to colonization, and names of tribes that inhabited the land are visible. Above that are images from Ellis Island records. There are Asian immigrants building our railroads on the right side. Closer to the top are modern images of the MX-U.S. border mixed with photos of MX immigrants working our fields.
This mosaic, as with most of my fine art work, is intended to challenge the viewer to examine their perspective. What do we stand for? What does our nation’s motto, “E Pluribus Unum” mean? (“Out of many, one.”) And what have we become?
