Murals by Juliana Martinez seen at North Hills Wellness Center, Los Angeles - Respect Through the Ages

Respect Through the Ages

Item details

“Respect Through the Ages" (terra cotta, glass, porcelain, hand painted ceramic tile; 2014) is a mosaic tile mural by ceramic artist Juliana Martinez. Commissioned by the North Hills Wellness Center, the piece features a child within a female and male figure, whose outstretched arms become tree branches. The imagery suggests the extension of compassion and understanding beyond the home and into the world.

To create the artwork, Martinez and Monroe High School art teacher Sally Hall led two workshops for students. The class discussed how increased use of technology and social media has challenged how people traditionally develop meaningful relationships. They concluded that having consideration for one another and one’s self is integral to building and sustaining a healthy community and school environment. Following the discussion, the students created tiles that depict what respect might look like if it was represented as an organ in the body. Their tiles show many different perspectives and indicate the delicate nature of the relationship between mind and body.

The artwork features more than 3,000 terra cotta, glass, porcelain and hand painted ceramic mosaic tiles. Martinez spent over six months shaping, glazing and firing each of the pieces that comprise the tree branches and some 300 hand sculpted roses in her small studio.

Context & Credits

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Meet the Creator

“Juliana Martinez, a native of Miramar, Santurce, Puerto Rico, has been making mosaics since she was 6 years old. She is primarily a mosaic and water feature artist, specializing in Public Art, but also a veteran chalk artist, painter, and assemblage artist. She holds an EDD in Education, and in addition to being an artist, has been teaching and mentoring for 28 years. She was an art teacher at the prestigious Notre Dame Academy Girls’ High School in West Los Angeles, taught during the Gulf War on a Native American Reservation in New Mexico, been lead teacher in a one-room school in Ponce, Puerto Rico, and has mentored at-risk teenagers at street painting workshops and in the LAPD’s Jeopardy Program over the last 20 years. Juliana was chosen as a resident artist of Los Angeles for 2014-2015 by the Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs and was chosen to receive a “heart” on the “Walk of Hearts” in Canoga Park in recognition for her work with at-risk, disadvantaged, and developmentally disabled children.
She has worked and taught in California, Oregon, Puerto Rico, New Mexico, Texas, and Mexico, the last as part of a team the City of Los Angeles commissioned as part of a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.
She has participated in over 100 gallery shows and exhibitions have been a resident artist in multiple locations, and has curated many art exhibitions.”