More than 200 San Marcos-area residents turned out for workshops over the weekend to assemble their own square foot of the tile mosaic murals Austin artist J. Muzacz designed for the Downtown Mobility Hub at 214 E. Hutchison St.
Muzacz and his team of assistants provided printouts of color grids to volunteers of all ages on Saturday at the San Marcos Library and on Sunday at the Price Center to guide them as they chose tiles from a “tile buffet” to place into a plastic grid. These grids will become part of the 228 squares that form the murals. Participants could refer to a numbered reference of the murals to find out where their square would fit into the final murals.
“We’re gonna have more than 40 or 50,000 tiles in this thing, so we can install it by square feet. Muzacz said. “Everybody’s laying out 225 tiles per square foot.”
In July, Muzacz and the San Marcos Arts Commission Mural Arts Program hosted an open house at the Hays County Courthouse rotunda to get public input about the subject of the mural. The natural beauty and history of the San Marcos area were popular requests during the workshop as well as on the online survey he offered for those who couldn’t attend.
”The river is like number one, and how to showcase that,” Muzacz said. “There’s also a lot of comments about indigenous representation. So there’s some back and forth. It’s a little bit difficult to put faces and imagery into a public mural for various reasons. So we landed on the natural elements.”
The front mural will feature birds of San Marcos, while the back will feature fish native to the area. “I did some research and found all the specific water birds that would be along the river. You put them together in a composition backed by a sort of river abstraction, river colors, greens and blues. And then the back side, we thought underwater, so we did fish.”
“The iridescent shimmer of the tiles is the perfect material medium to represent the river itself and the reflection of the sun bouncing off the water,” Muzacz said. “We have some depths of color that you can’t get with paint.”
San Marcos resident Michele Donnelly said the workshop was a fun way to meet people and collaborate with the community, creating a personal work that merges with the community vision. The tiles were often not an exact match to the printouts, giving participants creative options to fill their tile grids.
“Everybody’s piece is going to really be their own, because it’s going to be what tiles they chose to match those colors,” Donnelly said. “It will be cohesive creation of everybody. … So you have a large piece that’s made from little bits of people and their thoughts and their ideas and their creativity.”
“The real mosaic magic that happens in these community work days is that strangers come to a table to create this thing together and leave as friends,” Muzacz said. “And it’s intergenerational. You’ve got kids and elders, and we’re all tinkering side-by-side and figuring out colors and asking questions … we all come together to create this monument in the city. And I think that’s real special.”
Other mosaic tile works by Muzacz in Central Texas include projects in Georgetown and Austin. “El Arbol,” located in the lobby of the City of Georgetown Municipal Court building, was his first large-scale tile mosaic project, completed in 2019. In 2023, he included input from the Austin cycling community for the “We All Ride,” diptych mosaic mural at the Travis County Civil and Family Courts Facility. And Austin FC fans have likely seen his 80-foot-long mural, “Heartbeat of Austin,” which depicts FC fans at the CapMetro McKalla Station in front of Q2 Stadium.
Check the San Marcos Arts Commission Facebook page at facebook.com/SMTXarts for updates on the mural title and installation date.
