World's 1st Wall-Mounted Solar Mural Installation

The World's 1st Wall-Mounted Solar Mural Installation will be mounted on the west-facing exterior wall of JT Brackenridge Elementary School at the historic crossroads of San Antonio's Westside: Guadalupe and South Brazos Streets. The Land Art Generator--a piece of public art producing renewable energy--will consist of 18 solar panels coated with image-embedded photovoltaic film.

The Esperanza Center has long been collecting and exhibiting historic photos as fotobanners along the streets of San Antonio’s Westside as part of a project called En Aquellos Tiempos: Fotohistorias del Westside, a unique outdoor street museum highlighting the area’s rich historical and cultural heritage. One section along the Guadalupe Street fence of JT Brackenridge Elementary School which you arrive at as you enter the Westside over the Guadalupe Bridge, is devoted to fifty sepia and black-and-white shots from 1906 to 1960 of children from this barrio.

This stretch is impressive during the day but dark at night: Esperanza has long wanted to nocturnally illuminate this important “art”-ery.

The World's 1st Wall-Mounted Solar Mural Installation will provide the electricity to do just that.

Last spring, Land Art Generator Initiative--global leaders in the crusade to make renewable energy beautiful--conducted community engagement workshops with over 75 fifth grade science students who learned about renewable energy and helped determine content/composition for the Solar Mural project. Then LAGI worked with a group of Westside community elders addressing the same challenge. Consensus between the two generationally-diverse groups led to selection of two images for an awesome Solar Mural artwork: a sepia-toned 1906 class picture of JT Brackenridge Elementary School students at the school’s nearby original site juxtaposed against a current color shot of the 75+ fifth-graders who helped with the project.

18 60-cell solar modules--9 modules per photo, each in a 3x3 composition!

Financé par San Antonio, TX (February 2019)