Join our Community Arts Engagement Tour!

“The art I want to see here is…”

As part of our community engagement for the City of Mountain View Public Art Strategy, we are excited to collaborate with local Santa Clara County artists Amy Brown and Tara de la Garza to pop-up with us at three public events to engage with community members through their art activity entitled, Inflatable / ART

Amy Brown and Tara de la Garza invite community members to collect film plastic (such as newspaper sleeves and bread bags) to help them make inflatable letters to spell ART so that we can start a conversation around what art and creativity mean to Mountain View. Please bring colorful, clean plastic bags, or just come along to any of our three events to reimagine single-use plastic waste into a community project.

Collectively, we will fuse these into plastic sheets and they will be cut, sewn, fused and assembled into inflatable letters spelling “ART” and we can write on them our ideas for a creative future. Add your voice! Use a Sharpie to write directly on the collected plastic. Your word becomes part of a living artwork — one that reflects the community’s collective hopes for Mountain View’s creative future. Others will read your contribution, so think of it as a love note to the city.

The completed inflatables will be temporarily displayed at the site, serving as both artwork and community monument. Once the project is complete, we will responsibly upcycle the plastic into new projects, continuing a circular economy model.

Participate at one or all of our arts engagement tour stops:

Monster Bash

• Date: Saturday, October 25, 2025
• Time: 10 a.m. - 2 p.m.
• Location: Rengstorff Park & Pool, 201 S Rengstorff Ave. Mountain View, CA 94040

Día de Muertos

• Date: Saturday, November 1, 2025
• Time: 11:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.
• Location: Civic Center Plaza at 500 Castro St

Community Tree Lighting Celebration

• Date: Monday, Dec. 8, 2025
• Time: 5:30 p.m. to 8 p.m.
• Location: Civic Center Plaza

About the Artists:

Tara de la Garza is a visual artist, curator, and nonprofit director whose practice transforms hard-to-recycle plastics into sculptural installations, light-based works, and functional design. She is Founder and Creative Director of Inventurous, a nonprofit micro-recycler that engages Bay Area communities through workshops, youth programs, and public art projects. Tara has exhibited at Mass MoCA, the Chicago Art Institute, Cornell University, Palo Alto Art Center, San Francisco Design Week, and is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Watson Library. She holds a long term artist residency at Cubberley in Palo Alto and is a Public Art Commissioner in Palo Alto.

Amy Brown is a San Jose–based artist and educator whose socially engaged projects span sewing, textiles, inflatables, and collaborative community art. Her work has been shown at Empire Seven Studios, San Jose Museum of Quilts & Textiles, SPARC Los Angeles, and Zócalo Mexico City. Amy has led workshops and projects with local museums, sewing clubs, and community centers, emphasizing inclusivity and craft as a bridge to connection. She is the founder of Queer Craft Club and has created costumes and props for the Children’s Discovery Museum, VEEP, and commercial projects.