In normal times, completion of a three-year project to create seven large mosaic reproductions of Yakima Valley fruit labels would have prompted a big public celebration. Not so during a global pandemic.
In October, the final mosaic — depicting Royal Purple, a Holtzinger label with bold Gothic letters — was installed near 601 Elm St. in Tieton. Unlike the unveiling of a Keller Fruit label on the Mighty Tieton warehouse in early December 2019, there weren’t any speeches. There wasn’t a crowd.
“We didn’t really announce it. We just dug a hole and stuck in the posts,” said Ed Marquand, co-founder of artisan business incubator Mighty Tieton.
The large mosaic billboards brighten buildings and open spaces around the picturesque town square of this Upper Valley community. The fruit labels also pay homage to the area’s fruit production history. The mosaics sit in metal frames, weigh about 200 to 250 pounds and include anywhere from 10,000 to 15,000 small squares or chunks of glass.
Royal Purple was the seventh and final mosaic in the Vintage project led by Tieton Arts & Humanities, which began in 2017 with a $48,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. The murals are created by Tieton Mosaic artists and plaques with a brief history accompany each label. Each mosaic is sealed every year, protecting the artwork.
When the Keller Fruit label was dedicated, the Holtzinger mural was on track to go up in February. That was around the time cases of COVID-19 began increasing in the United States, which delayed its debut. But it’s up.
Grants launch self-sustaining artisan business
The Vintage grant was the second grant Tieton Mosaic received from the NEA. In 2013, Kris Tucker, then head of ArtsWA, contacted Tieton Arts & Humanities about an NEA grants program called “Our Town,” Marquand said. Tucker helped the nonprofit apply and Tieton Arts & Humanities raised funds to triple its $50,000 grant. That started the studio and funded the first mosaic directional signs around town.
For the Vintage project, Tieton Arts & Humanities had to raise another $200,000 in addition to the $48,000 grant to complete all seven fruit label mosaics. Several area fruit families in the area, Cowiche Growers and 200 Kickstarter and Facebook donors made that happen, Marquand said.
The first mosaic — a blue capital T and a ribbon with Tieton in red letters, all on a yellow background — was funded by the grant and went up in 2018. A Kickstarter campaign funded the Tie-It-On terrier mosaic and the Garretson family was the first fruit family who sponsored a mosaic.
“I think that really gave us the credibility and the momentum to do it,” Marquand said of Joel Garretson and the family’s “Moon Apples” mural on the Boxx Gallery, Marquand said. “It was a big leap on Joel’s part but he believed in us and that really got the ball rolling.”
Seattle project
Along with earning admirers from around and beyond Yakima County, the vibrant murals caught the attention of Sound Transit officials. Sound Transit, which operates the Link light rail system in Seattle and Tacoma and regional Sounder commuter rail, noticed the quality of the work Tieton Mosaic was doing and asked the studio to submit a competitive proposal to produce mosaic murals for its stations, Marquand said.
After submitting the proposal in January, Tieton Mosaic was awarded a contract last summer to produce 25 mosaic murals for Sound Transit’s downtown Redmond station, set to open in 2024. Tieton Mosaic is waiting for Sound Transit to finalize the designs of the first five mosaics. Once that’s done, studio staff can order the glass and start creating them.
“The murals are going to be bigger, 12 feet wide by 6 feet tall, each one. ... We’re working with designs that are submitted by artists who are selected by Sound Transit,” Marquand said. “From what I’ve seen, the variety of styles is pretty big and lots of fun. We’re pretty excited because these things are going to get a lot of visibility and attention.”
It’s a major opportunity for Tieton Mosaic and will take the studio to a much more ambitious level. The visibility will attract national and perhaps even international business, Marquand said, which will allow the studio to grow and hire more local talent.
“Our ambition for Tieton Mosaic is being realized,” he said.
Though the coronavirus pandemic impacted production, once they learned they’d landed the contract with Sound Transit, staff at Tieton Mosaic began working on ways to make production more streamlined and efficient. Work will begin on five murals at the same time, all by the same artist.
It’s taken seven years of hard work and persistence, but Tieton Mosaic is about to take off as a solid business that Tieton and the entire area can be proud of, he said.
“To me, this proves again that small grants to art enterprises can have an exponential impact on a community. It starts with a good idea fueled by a little bit of money, putting together the talented team to prove that the work can be done, and then building support from the community,” Marquand said.
Still taking other projectsTieton Mosaic will hire more staff for the Sound Transit project, following COVID-19 restrictions so no one is in danger as production ramps up.
“As soon as we start to work and as soon as we get in the groove, we will hire people. Because of the way the production is changing, we will be able to hire people at a more basic skill level,” Marquand said. “There are a couple people who had done work for us before and they should be able to again ... but we really need to see how quickly our new production methods go and how much work we actually need.
“I think we’re in good shape to do a really great job. The visibility of these things in the terminal — lots and lots and lots of people are going to be seeing them and enjoying them and noticing them.”
Even as this big project launches in the next few weeks, Tieton Mosaic artists are actively seeking more commissions. There aren’t any other fruit labels in the works, but they’d be happy to create more of those, too.
“If somebody comes along and they want to, of course we’re eager and able,” Marquand said.
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Vintage mural project in Tieton complete with seventh mural - Yakima Herald-Republic
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