Napa’s Rail Arts District likely to debut long-awaited Napa Quake Mosaic this year

The Napa Valley Vine Trail Coalition and the Napa Valley Wine Train were faced with pretty much the same problem about a decade ago.

The Wine Train — which runs up through the valley to various wineries, surrounded by verdant vineyards and hills — would rumble through an old industrial rail area in the city of Napa for the first few miles of its journey, giving riders views of the backs of buildings.

And at the same time, walkers and cyclists of the Napa Valley Vine Trail would often travel along the railside zone, as that portion of the path runs alongside the Wine Train tracks.

Chuck McMinn, founder and board president of the Vine Trail coalition, said the 2-mile trail section — from the Oxbow district to Redwood Road — is central to the Vine Trail. Along with running through the middle of the city of Napa, the stretch is also in the center of the 47 miles the trail is eventually planned to span, from Calistoga to the Vallejo Ferry Terminal.

“It was a typical rail corridor through the city; raised rail and all the tires and weeds and cement, no windows,” McMinn said. “One of the five guiding principles for the Vine Trail is that we’re building a world-class trail, and that 2 miles was not world-class.”

The area is now known as the Rail Arts District, serving as a free, open-air art museum, with an abundance of murals and painted utility boxes. A nonprofit organization has operated the district since 2016; it runs arts education programs and plans for its future to include more permanent and temporary art installations, such as the terracotta sculptures installed in late 2022.

Perhaps the most notable and long-awaited art piece that’s been planned for the district is likely to be installed this year, upon a train car donated by the Wine Train. That’s the Napa Quake Mosaic, a piece intended to honor those affected by the 2014 south Napa Earthquake.

Napa public artist Kristina Young has been working to create the mosaic for about nine years, using donated household objects broken in the quake. There have been about 2,000 people involved in making the mosaic so far, she said.

“It has come to mean much more than a memorial to that experience,” Young said. “It is about resilience in the face of huge challenge and how we can make big things happen one small piece at a time. Now, we just have to bring her home.”

Young and the Rail Artist District secured a $25,000 grant for the final phase of installing the mosaic and they’re about 80% of the way to securing $50,000 in matching funds. The funds are needed to hire an engineer, landscapers, someone to pour the foundation, someone to crane the rail car into place and to hire artists to put the mosaic together, according to Young.

The Rail Arts District and the Earthquake Mosaic go hand-in-hand, she said.

“To me, to make public art relevant, you have to work with the local community that it’s going to be in,” she said. “Otherwise it just doesn’t make sense for publicly used property.”

Getting started

But back in 2014, the seeds of figuring out what to do with the Rail Arts District area were just being planted.

The Vine Trail’s Arts, Culture and Education committee was charged with figuring out what to do with the area. The overall focus of the committee is to make the bike trail “more than just asphalt, to make it actually an experience or multiple experiences,” McMinn said.

Young, who was a member of the committee, said though it was technically focused on envisioning the entirety of the eventual trail, much of the focus was on the area that became the Rail Arts District.

“It was the area that needed the most help, really,” she said. “It was very unsafe, with trash and graffiti everywhere. And we really thought we could get more users and make it better for people who did use it.”

There were plenty of “students and joggers and people going to work” who used the trail — more people than she originally thought.

At the same time the committee was discussing adding sculptures and murals to the area, artists and property owners were asking about the possibilities. And eventually the idea of creating Napa’s first arts district arose.

The Vine Trail Coalition and the Wine Train then agreed the district should be run through a separate nonprofit. The Rail Arts District nonprofit was founded in 2016, with Shelly Willis hired as director.

Willis said the nonprofit started with interest in supporting local public artists and in creating a space for people to see contemporary art for free, with an educational component.

“We wanted it to be a place where you could experience contemporary art in all media,” she said. “Not just murals, but eventually sculpture and earthworks and even works that deal with media, interactive works, those kinds of things. And we also wanted to produce and start to connect these projects to the community through educational programs.”

The first public art project of the district arrived in 2017. “Knocking on Heaven’s Door,” by artists BEZT and Natalia Rak, of Poland, was a large mural just north of Vallejo Street. Plenty more have since followed.

Future of the district

The district is working to create sites for people to gather and eat, or enjoy a glass of wine, within the art district. The plan, McMinn said, is to use a portion of the Wine Train right of way opposite the Vine Trail, from Vallejo Street to Lincoln Avenue. The idea is to give people a reason to sit down and take in the art in the two-block area.

“We’re going to level it out and put in decomposed granite and seating areas and palm trees and lights, and chop up the space into about 20 little vignettes between the palm trees that we can do all kinds of things with,” he said. “You can park food trucks, you can put up art installations, you can put in seating.”

Jennifer Owen, the city of Napa’s economic development coordinator, said the city sees the nonprofit as a partner in the beautification of the city’s built environment, as well as for diversifying what the city has to offer locals and tourists.

Owen added that she thinks world-class cities are set apart from the rest by having neighborhoods with different textures and a unique sense of character to them. The feel of those areas also connects to the specific character of the community, she said.

“What the Rail Arts District says about the city of Napa is that we’re a community that values art, that we’re innovative,” Owen said. “We are wine and tourism and hospitality plus maybe some things that weren’t anticipated by your average Joe.”

Willis and McMinn both talked about how art in the district differs from art designed to be shown in a gallery. McMinn noted that the art in the Rail Arts District is connected to the community by necessity, as pieces people encounter in their everyday life.

“Public art, the way I see it, is art is part of your community life,” McMinn said. “Not separate and removed and a destination. We’re bringing art into everybody’s everyday life, into their everyday geographies and landscapes. And I think that it does resonate with people.”

You can reach Staff Writer Edward Booth at 707-521-5281 or edward.booth@pressdemocrat.com.