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Artist Statement for Oscar Alvarado
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Mosaic artist Oscar Alvarado is currently creating large-scale sculptures made with steel armatures filled with concrete, then intricately covered in thousands pieces of tile, glass and found objects.
During his 20-year career Alvarado has covered walls, water features, and other public spaces in South Texas with tile. His work along San Antonio’s Riverwalk is seen by 4 million people every year. He also works in smaller proportions, reusing discarded household items and transforming them into striking mosaic hanging art.
His first public art project was “Llave,” in 1999, a tile mural on the exterior of the Antonio E. Garcia Center for the Arts, commissioned by the South Texas Institute for the Arts while Alvarado was the artist-in-residence at the South Texas Art Museum. As part of this residency, he also taught children to create with tile. For that piece, a six by twelve-foot wall mural, Alvarado used hundreds of keys he’d collected in various ways a meta- depiction of one of the children he had taught, making her own mosaic.
“Just by giving a single key, donors felt a sense of ownership to this public art piece,” says Alvarado. Another quote about how that’s important—that public be/get involved in public art.
In addition to public art, Alvarado accepts private commissions for mosaic-tiled entryways, kitchens, and bathroom. One of his Roman-style marble mosaic entryways was featured on HGTV’s “Modern Masters” in 2001.
Alvarado completed the twelve mosaic tile murals for San Antonio’s Riverwalk in 2002, using over 100,000 pieces of tile and glass for the murals. He also tiled the water feature in Convent Park, embedding many of the artifacts unearthed during excavation of the site. The murals have transformed the north end of the Riverwalk from dingy to vibrant.
Since winning “Best of Show” at the 1997 Guadalupe Cultural Arts Hecho a Mano Show, Alvarado has participated in a variety of group shows, plus a number of one man installations at art spaces throughout San Antonio and South Texas, including regular installations for Contemporary Art Month, held each July in San Antonio. He creates fantastical furniture using salvaged items juxtaposed with tile. For one patron he creates larger-than-life sculptures of animals using steel reinforced concrete covered with tile. Each sculpture weighs over a ton, and is covered with thousands of pieces of tile.
I look forward to an opportunity to create installations and sculptures that communicate to all people. I am tiling my way around the world!
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