When you stand in the main foyer at Sonia Sotomayor Elementary, you are about to enter a very special place. One that teaches you how to enter another world deeply—to symbolize and communicate with your Spanish-speaking neighbors—some who live here and some who live half a world away. Looking through the two sets of glass entry doors is much like looking through the cobalt blue geometry that frames the mosaic “El Jardin de
The
Background
I have lived and traveled for many years in Latin America. From refugee camps, to war zones and orphanages, to watching Haley’s comet from a high Andean plaza, canoeing in the Amazon rainforest, paragliding in the Atacama desert, and climbing the Pyramid of the Sun at Teotihuacán, I have tried here to express my love for the amazing complexities and interwoven realities of the Latin American people and landscape.
A word of deep gratitude and thanks to the United States Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor for contributing her words of wisdom to our children in this artwork.