A turtle named SeƱor Tortuga, a rabbit named Sir Hops a Lot and a snake named Mr. Snizzles are all part of an elaborate mosaic students at Coronado High School have been working on for more than a year and will be unveiled at the end of the month.
“All the animals have names,” said Kyana Van Houten, 17, a senior. “I worked on the owl last year and I didn’t come up with the name, but one of the other students started calling it Professor Van Hooten so that’s the owl’s name now.”
The art piece, which sits on three levels next to a staircase in the middle of campus, is a three-dimensional desert landscape with a river running through it. The mosaic is interactive, meaning people can crawl upon it, and is made of glass, ceramics, handmade clay slabs and natural elements like rocks. All the animals were made of ceramics and later mosaicked.
“What I think is cool about this project is that it’s mosaics upon mosaics,” said Kirstin Green, the school’s artist-in-residence.
Read the entire Union Tribune story and see photos here.
