You Are Home – Public Art

​The You Are Home public art piece is located at an affordable housing project for LGBTQ seniors, where it celebrates community spirit, pride and culture. Multiple art elements utilize light and shadow throughout the project, including a 16-foot tall obelisk/light tower, exterior sconces of cut aluminum, and colored LED lights, all of which act as a beacon home. Symbols and designs etched into concrete, along with shaped and colored acrylic, hang in the courtyard and exterior. A large array of multi-colored shapes form a sundial on a south facing wall. The wall, visible from a distance, shows a compass that points due north, representing the direction toward home and the North Star – a constant in the night sky just beyond the project wall. The sundial creates colored shadows that move throughout the day, casting shapes and symbols onto the wall. This artwork is a colorful and festive celebration of life and light, changing throughout the day and night with the natural cycles of sun and stars.

There are only a handful of LGBT-affirming affordable communities for seniors in the nation. North Park Seniors is a 76 apartment, transit-oriented development completed in December of 2017. It is trailblazing project, making strides for San Diego’s LGBT senior community as well as playing a substantial part in improving of the city’s density bonus law. Innovative and imaginative, North Park Seniors was designed and entitled as part of a sustainable, transit-oriented, mixed-income, 194 unit development. A major developer is building 118 market-rate apartments, while Community Housing Works has built and owns the 76 senior apartments. Community HousingWorks partnered with the LGBT Center of San Diego to provide homes that are open to all, with an affirming and supportive environment for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender seniors. The community also shelters formerly homeless seniors in eight permanent supportive housing studios. The artist and architect, both of whom are local North Park businesses, collaborated on creating the You Are Home installation. It embraces the pedestrian landscape with color, movement, and a sundial and tower with motifs of the timeless cycle of sun and stars.