Varda-Pardinas Mosaic Restoration
In 1960, Jean Varda was commissioned to design a mosaic for the new Villa Roma Hotel in Fisherman’s Wharf. The mosaic was created by mosaic artist, Alfonso Pardinas, on the wall next to the entrance of the Villa Roma.
In 1982 the Villa Roma was demolished. Victor di Suvero, along with several of Varda’s other Sausalito friends, raised funds to save the mosaic from demolition, and to transport it to Sausalito.
On Sept 18, 1982, the 23 ton mosaic was trucked across the Golden Gate Bridge to Marinship Park, and given to the City. Varda’s friends had hoped it would be installed at the Ferry Landing or Dunphy Park. Instead, it lay on its back in Marinship Park for 6 years with remnants of Christo’s Running Fence providing it protection.
In 1988, thanks to Paul Anderson, the Friends of the Sausalito Art Festival, and Sausalito Rotary, the mosaic was restored and permanently installed in Marinship Park.
Over the past 28 years the mosaic has suffered damage due to the aging rebar and cement. It needs to be restored. Pippa Murray, a Sausalito mosaic artist with a studio at Sausalito’s MLK property, has agreed to oversee the restoration.
In 2019, the Sausalito Foundation concluded the Varda Restoration project with a celebration of gratitude to the donors and partners in the project.
About the Artist:
Jean Varda (1893-1971) was born in Izmir, Turkey to French and Greek parents. He had close ties to the modernist movement in France and England. He moved to California in 1940 and spent the war years in Big Sur and Monterey. He moved to San Francisco in 1947 to accept a teaching position at the California School of Fine Arts (now the San Francisco Art Institute). That same year, while wandering around the Arques shipyard, in Sausalito, Varda and another artist, GordonOnslow Ford, came upon an old ferryboat, the Vallejo, which had been towed to the shipyard from Richmond and was scheduled to be torn up and sold for scrap. The two artists bought the old ferryboat, tied it up by a small plot of land purchased by Onslow Ford, and remodeled it for use as studio space for Onslow Ford and studio and living space for Varda. In approximately 1960, Onslow Ford sold his interest in the Vallejo to Alan Watts, the Zen popularizer and writer, and from that time until shortly before his death in January 1971, Varda shared the ferry boat with Alan Watts. Today the Vallejo remains at the same location, moored off of an area now designated as Varda Landing, off of Gate 5 Road.
Jean Varda is widely regarded as a leader in Sausalito’s development as an art colony in the 1940s, 50s and 60s. He was one of the founders of the Sausalito Art Festival in the early 1950s. In 1968 he was responsible for the overall design of the Art Festival.