Artwork Detail

The San Gabriel and Rio Hondo rivers are intertwined with the millennia-old histories of the Native peoples who inhabit this region. The swimming holes created by such rivers became prototypes of the modern public swimming pool. In the early twentieth century, hundreds of municipal pools were built across the United States, where they became part of the social fabric of communities as swimming for fun and exercise grew in popularity. But in the following decades, they became hotbeds of racial segregation. Today, public pools have returned to the role of community center -- swimming is accessible to all citizens regardless of race, ethnicity, or socioeconomic status. Rendered in glass mosaic pixels and measuring 2,100 square feet, Underwater Sunlight, depicts a swimmer’s submerged moment just before breaking the surface, surrounded by dancing air bubbles, and blinded by a noonday sun. A timeline of local histories accompanies the glass mosaic mural with lines of poetry written by students at neighboring Pioneer High School, which express the many manifestations of water in their lives.

Rebeca Méndez is an artist, designer, professor and chair at UCLA Design Media Arts, where she is the founder and director of the Counterforce Lab, a research and fieldwork studio that harnesses the power of art and design to engage with the reality of the global ecological crisis and its ties to environmental injustice. Her research and practice investigate design and media art in public space, critical approaches to public identities and landscape, and artistic projects based on field investigation methods. Méndez’s diverse works develop within science, design, and art through immersive installations, sound, video, photography, book arts, and drawing, with a focus on post humanism, eco-feminism, indigeneity, and environmental justice. She has received significant recognition including the CODA award in Public Spaces (2021); an honorary doctorate from Art Center College of Design (2019); inclusion into the permanent collection of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (2019); inclusion in the One Club Creative Hall of Fame (2017); the 2017 Medal of AIGA; and the 2012 National Design Award in Communication Design. Méndez is known for her career-long commitment to ‘design and art as a social force,’ and her interests and initiatives are a bridge between art, design, and science, and demonstrate a commitment to the environment and a sustainable future.