CaroMont Health Park getting artwork that embraces Gastonia and bees

Dale Edwards
·4 min read
Carlos Gonzalez Garcia, right, with Matko Kezele have been working on a large mosaic to be installed at the ballpark for the minor league baseball team in Gastonia, the Honey Hunters. Garcia said the project should be finished by late July or early August.
Carlos Gonzalez Garcia, right, with Matko Kezele have been working on a large mosaic to be installed at the ballpark for the minor league baseball team in Gastonia, the Honey Hunters. Garcia said the project should be finished by late July or early August.

Toward the end of summer, if you find yourself more than two hours away in Gastonia, and you’re missing Hillsborough, do not fear. Just purchase a ticket to see the town’s professional baseball team, the Gastonia Honey Hunters. There, at the team’s CaroMont Health Park, you’ll be treated to a towering mosaic from Carlos Gonzalez Garcia, who lives and has a studio in Hillsborough.

The ‘column’ is about 20 feet tall, and the mosaic design has two distinguishable sections divided in the middle by the word ‘Gastonia.’ The work is both an homage to the history of the town, and a fun tie-in for the state’s newest professional baseball team.

“We took all these geometrical elements of these historic buildings, and we placed them on the bottom of the column, which is about 50% of the column, and we just made them out of all of the mosaics with different colors,” said Garcia. “The other half is basically honeycombs that represents the whole beehive of the actual mosaic column structure that we’re making.”

Gastonia had sent out a request for quote, or an RFQ, for an art installment at the field. Gastonia is a Bee Sanctuary City, and with the Honey Hunters team name, it made sense for the mosaic to include a bee-focus. Also, Garcia has worked with columns, and understands the process.

Once Gastonia awarded the project to Garcia, he printed the design in strips that were laid in sections on the floor of the giant room he uses at the Eno Arts Mill. Each section is numbered and lines are drawn on the backs to help with installation at the site.

Thousands of small pieces of tile are attached to the design, and the strips are inspected to make sure pieces haven’t fallen off or shifted. The sections will then be stacked, in order, in boxes to be transported to the site in Gastonia. The installation will require scaffolding and take about a week to complete. It’s the first major project for Garcia since the “Love Hillsborough” community project in 2020.

Even though he is professionally trained, degreed, and has worked in mosaics for 20 years, Garcia has lived and worked in Hillsborough for two years, and he hopes the Gastonia project will lead to more work.

“I think eventually, once they see our quality of work and how we can do it, people will request what we do with mosaics,” Garcia said. When his studio, NC Mosaics, isn’t working on larger projects, Garcia offers workshops at the Eno Mill.

Another key element to the Gastonia project is that all of the material for the mosaic is made in North Carolina, and all of the tile pieces are made from recycled glass. There is no lead in any of the tile, and all of the colors were created by Garcia, some of it through trial and error of mixing different colors together. The process has enabled him to expand his options and achieve a luxurious color palette.

“Yes, they might not be as shiny, they might not be as colorful, but I think once you have a little color theory on mosaics, you can definitely make something really nice,” he said. “We’re making new colors every day and these are just the ones that we’ve been able to make since we started about six months ago. I think we can make a lot more colors with time.”

Working with Garcia on the project for Gastonia has been his friend Matko Kezele, who is from Croatia. The two studied mosaics in school in Italy, and, like Garcia, Kezele has 20 years of experience doing mosaics.

Carlos Gonzalez Garcia uses a machine from Turkey that quickly and easily breaks the tile for use in the mosaic.
Carlos Gonzalez Garcia uses a machine from Turkey that quickly and easily breaks the tile for use in the mosaic.

“He’s definitely helped me out with this project,” Garcia said of Kezele. “He’s someone who is really interesting that has worked on different types of projects around Europe. It’s his first time in the U.S., so I’ve tried to show him a little bit around North Carolina. We don’t even have to say anything, we just know what we need to do. He’s really good with colors and working with them and mixing the colors to get certain ones so the lines don’t look the same.”

Since he first took up space at the Eno Mill, Garcia has moved into a larger studio with a concrete floor, and in an area of the mill that is better suited for loud work. He said he pleased with the increase in events and shows that have been organized by Katie Lucas and the Orange County Arts Commission.

For more information about about Carlos Gonzales Garcia and NC Mosaics, go to www.ncmosaics.com.

Dale Edwards is managing editor for The News of Orange. Story used with permission from The News of Orange.

This article originally appeared on The Gaston Gazette: CaroMont Health Park getting artwork that embraces Gastonia and bees