Coastal Corridor Alliance turns river trash into traveling 10x20-foot mosaic

The Coastal Corridor Alliance presented a community art project on June 5 to the Costa Mesa Arts Commission that repurposes trash collected at the Santa Ana River mouth into large-format mosaics.

The group’s deputy director, Brett Vavos, said the organization—best known for the preservation campaign around Banning Ranch, now called the Randall Preserve—led the initiative to both engage residents and promote conservation. “From the beginning, our goal has always been to make stunning art,” said project staffer Astras (Astris) Perez, who described the group’s five-month trash-collection effort.

The project team collected primarily beach and river-mouth debris, sorted it, cleaned items deemed suitable for handling and built temporary mosaics at public events in Fairview Park. Perez said the cleaning process generally used white distilled vinegar and a 30-minute soak to rinse and sterilize recovered materials. The group estimates the art-usable material taken from the river-mouth cleanups filled roughly 100 gallons of five-gallon bags once sorted and dried.

Coastal Corridor has contracted an art director and two artists for the effort and said initial program funding came through a Parks California grant. Perez said the group paid the art director “a few thousand dollars” during the pilot phase, and that much of the early funding went to tents, tables, storage and staff time to develop the process. The alliance said its staff for the project currently numbers roughly six, with a rotating cohort of interns and volunteers; typical event staffing is about a dozen people.

The organization works with cultural partners listed in its presentation—identified in the meeting as the Hashimah Nation (named alternately in earlier remarks), Coastline College and Santa Ana College—and said some templates and imagery for the mosaics were informed by Indigenous partners. Event turnout included Costa Mesa residents and visitors from Huntington Beach, Newport Beach and Santa Ana; staff noted outreach to Spanish-speaking families and Title I schools as a program priority.

The group’s stated goal is to complete a permanent, tourable 10-by-20-foot mosaic that would travel to community venues across Orange County. Perez invited commissioners to suggest funding sources, partner agencies and public venues and noted the mosaic will appear at a Santa Ana Art Walk event on Oct. 4.

Commissioners asked about logistics, cost and safety: Perez said usable pieces were selected during sorting, soaked in vinegar, rinsed and kept in a storage yard and that not all recovered debris was used because some items could not be cleaned or were unsafe to handle. She described the finished works as modular and reusable (pins rather than permanent adhesives), allowing materials to be reused across events and reducing incremental material costs.

The commission offered feedback and suggested funding sources—including the California Arts Council and local arts grant programs—and invited the group to apply for Arts Commission grants in future cycles. The Coastal Corridor Alliance said it will continue monthly pop-up art studios at Fairview Park and maintain regular restoration and trash removal at the Santa Ana River mouth.