More than 150 people came out Saturday morning to see scores of WATCH Resources Inc. Art Guild artists unveil a new, grant-funded ceramic mosaic mural — which they worked on together for nine months — on South Washington Street in downtown Sonora.
Jenna DeCosta, 28, of Sonora, one of 60 WATCH Art Guild artists who worked on the project, put her right hand on a portion of the mural to show which parts of the new art installment she helped make.
“I did the bear and we put the grout in there,” DeCosta said.
“I did the water and the bear and the sky,” said WATCH Art Guild artist Monty Chu, 41, of Sonora.
Chu invited WATCH Art Guild artist Morgan Fox, 28, of Tuolumne, to explain part of the work she did on the mural.
“I made the bear ceramics right here,” Fox said. “We glazed everything. I did a lot of the flowers, too. We worked months on it.”
The Sonora nonprofit WATCH Resources Inc. offers support and services to adults with intellectual disabilities and their families, and the grant-funded project is titled “Adults with Intellectual Disabilities Creating Art for Tuolumne County.” The WATCH acronym dates to the nonprofit’s creation in 1972, when its founders began to create work activities for disabled individuals in Tuolumne County.
Sondra Younger, of Avery, came downtown to view the mural with Mica Sutton, of Sonora, and Evan Sargent, of Twain Harte, two employees of Valley Mountain Regional Center, which has an office in San Andreas and offers disability support services in Amador, Calaveras, and Tuolumne counties. Sargent brought his daughters, Greer Sargent, age 4, and Quinn Sargent, 6.
“I work with Mica and we work for Valley Mountain Regional Center and we work with WATCH Resources,” Sargent said.
Some of the people Sutton and Sargent help also attend a WATCH day program, and they were paid to work on the mural, Sargent said, “so they got an income for that.”
Brandi Casner, 35, of Tuolumne, another WATCH Art Guild artist, said she and her peers from WATCH worked nine months straight on the mural.
Athena Vida, the Art Guild coordinator at WATCH Resources, said it’s her job to find projects where artists at WATCH become professionals and get paid for their artwork.
“So Laurie Livington at TCA, Tuolumne County Arts, she emailed me an opportunity from the California Arts Council to apply for a grant,” Vida said. “We got the grant from the Heartland Creative Corps.”
A total of 60 WATCH artists who worked on the ceramic mosaic mural “got to help their community and were able to get employment through this project,” Vida said.
“The grant paid for them to be able to make minimum wage, $16 an hour,” she said. “They got to be able to make money.”
WATCH Resources has 150 clients, ages 22 to 82, Vida said, and some WATCH clients are living independently, some live with their families, and some live in group homes or assisted living facilities.
Artist and art instructor Dianne Stearns, a Sonora resident for 48 years, designed the mural.
“Athena applied for the grant, got it, and then hired me at what I’m best at: making art, creating art, designing art,” Stearns said.
Stearns started with blank sheets of paper and made many drawings. She spent six weeks in the design phase beginning in June last year. In July, she had an approved thumbnail sketch, printed out enlarged sections of the sketch, and began supervising WATCH student artists making animals for the mosaic mural, from materials including clay, which was bisque-fired, then glazed, and fired again.
Once all of the animals for the mural were completed at WATCH, they moved the project to Stearns’ studio in Sonora, where the WATCH Art Guild artists continued work on the mural from September through March.
“It’s been on the wall here since the 23rd of March,” Stearns said, standing next to the mural at 225 S. Washington St., the former Bank of Stockton branch, which now houses the offices of estate planning attorney Tamara M. Polley. “”We installed it on the 23rd of March. The 29th we grouted it, the top part. Last weekend, we grouted the bottom part.”
It was rewarding to work with WATCH Resources clients and artists because “they’re cheerful, they’re capable, they’re talented, they’re fun, and willing,” Stearns said. “It was my absolute honor to work with them.”
The WATCH Resources Inc. grant-funded project is the first of eight Tuolumne County art projects backed by $687,707 in Heartland Creative Corps grants awarded and announced in June 2023.
The state grants are intended to support artists who are locally focused on spreading awareness of public health messages, civic engagement, social justice, water and energy conservation, climate mitigation, and emergency preparedness. Projects are expected to be complete by late June.
“The California Arts Council, this came down from Gavin Newsom,” Laurie Livingston, executive director of Tuolumne County Arts, said Saturday, next to the new WATCH Art Guild artists’ mural. “It was his idea to recreate a facsimile of the Work Projects Administration, to put people and artists to work during and after the Depression in the 1930s. The WPA. A lot of the things we have, beautiful murals, are from WPA. It was the governor’s idea to give money to the California Arts Council for these grants.”
The George Post mural “Lumbering, Agriculture and Mining” was moved to the new Sonora High School Library in 1976.
Ben and Beth Watson, of Sonora, parents of WATCH Resources client, Cord Watson, 37, said Cord loves WATCH and that is a primary reason they remain in Sonora. Cord Watson lives at home with his parents and tries to go to WATCH five days a week.
“Cord’s been at WATCH about 15 years,” Beth Watson said. Though Cord did not work on the mural, he loves painting, his mother said. He also likes working on computers.
“The program here with WATCH has been really good for Cord,” Ben Watson said. “It would be tough to take him out of a situation he loves so much. The snow day yesterday, he couldn’t stand the fact that he wasn’t able to go to WATCH when they closed it. He doesn’t ever want to miss a day at WATCH. That’s his whole social network. That’s his whole world. Being there and being able to go there five days a week.”
