In 2019, Amplify was proud to partner with Immigrant Legal Center (ILC), an organization that welcomes immigrants into our communities by providing high-quality legal services, education, and advocacy, to bring artwork to their central Omaha offices. ILC specializes in serving survivors of domestic violence, children who have been abandoned, abused, or neglected, refugees and asylum seekers, and those with acute medical needs. The call to artists was designed specifically with those ILC serves in mind and sought proposals for work that favored concepts connected to cultural memory, shared histories, and reassuring notions of "home."
Rajiv Fernandez was selected by a panel of ILC staff members and former clients to create public artwork on the building’s exterior that reflects the organization’s mission and values. During a series of open work days, ILC staff and community members actively contributed to designing and assembling the mosaics installed on the building’s facade with help from project facilitator, Rachel Ziegler.
Banner: Rajiv Fernandez; Mosaics: Rachel Ziegler
Rajiv Fernandez is the author of Baby to Brooklyn and Baby to Big, contributor to Posters for Change and The Alphabet that Changed the World. His work has been featured in The Washington Post, WSJ, and the MoMA Store among others. Trained as an architect and hailing from Iowa, his endeavors have taken him all over the world from the Bluffs to Buenos Aires, Bangalore and to Brooklyn, where he calls home. When not drawing you can find him painting the lines on a tennis court or doing sketches on the comedy stage.
Rachel Ziegler’s collaborates with communities to realize large-scale mosaic projects across the U.S. She recently started Reformed, an assembly space housed in a decommissioned church that hosts live performances, exhibitions, and an artist residency program, in South Omaha’s Vinton Arts District.