This site-specific public art project for the Horace Mann Elementary School in San Jose, CA consisted of five smaller projects. Each of these works was intended to provide an interactive, aesthetic learning experience for the students, and to familiarize them with the flora and fauna of their local environment. In this way the project allowed for a broadening of the viewer’s sense of place and memory. Several of the pieces also offered the potential for a hands on experience for the students through the process of making molds and/or rubbings of portions of the piece.

The five projects are as follows:

Footprints of various local birds and animals are stamped into the concrete by the drinking fountain.

A reproduction of a Dilophosaurus fossil was created on the wall in the school yard.

The names of various local minerals, trees and animals were created as bronze name plaques for all of the classrooms on the first, second and third floors of the school.

Twenty six California birds were selected whose name started with one of the letters of the alphabet. Their images along with the corresponding letter and name (similar to alphabet books) were sandblasted onto the classroom windows.

A series of banners were created for the multi-use room which utilized imagery from a mosaic mural which existed at the former school site.