By Michael Balderston
The Mosaic District in Fairfax is constantly growing, offering new shops, restaurants and entertainment to the community with its unique style and design. This means a lot of construction has and continues to take place at the shopping center. But rather than throw up a plain wall around construction sites, Mosaic has found a way to add their unique touch with the Mosaic Yards program.
If you’ve visited Mosaic at any time over the last year you have likely seen the project – 150 paintings decorating the walls around the construction of the upcoming Modera Mosaic apartment buildings. Among those paintings are the works of professional artists, children from Inova Hospital and even Edens’ marketing director Angela Rakis’ mother.
“Mosaic’s vision has always been to be a part of the community and enrich that area and we believe art is a part of that,” says Rakis. “It really was just a big white wall and it was screaming for something; something creative, something innovative, something fun that would engage our community.”
To fill that space Mosaic allowed artists to create their own works of arts on yard-length panels, uniquely expressing themselves.
“Each one is not a Picasso or a work of fine art,” says Rakis, “but each one represents a little piece of our community and that’s what’s really cool about it.”
One artist represented in the project is local professional Jessica Kallista. She has two works currently on display and reached out to others local artists about this opportunity to show off their work.
“It’s really good they are trying to transform the space at Mosaic so art is there,” says Kallista. “It’s really fantastic for the community, for artists and for art lovers as well.”
At least in its current iteration, Mosaic Yards won’t be around for too much longer. With construction coming to a close on the Modera apartments, Mosaic will be finding new homes for the paintings. Some won’t be going very far at all, as Modera has agreed to use a number of the works in the lobby and hallways of their building. The remaining paintings will find new homes either in a similar capacity around constructions sites as Mosaic continues to expand, or elsewhere within the shopping center.
Mosaic’s mission is to create community engagement to establish “the most innovative retail & entertainment community.” Mosaic Yards is certainly a strong step in that direction.
