Art & Sustainability: Sister Cities Celebrate Shared Values Around Art
​and the Environment

Out of a rainwater harvesting project in Yaxe, Oaxaca, an exciting new Neighbors Abroad initiative has emerged: Art & Sustainability will showcase Sister City artists whose creative endeavors also offer compelling commentary on issues of sustainability and environmental awareness. 

In Yaxe, the art will be displayed on water tanks Neighbors Abroad worked to have installed in the village, in cooperation with other non-profits. The 50 tanks are providing much-needed drinking water to approximately 3,000 residents. In the coming months, some of these tanks will be adorned with reproductions of art from Palo Alto and our Sister Cities. 

In addition to the contributions from our artist in Oaxaca--a region of Mexico that has long been celebrated for its vibrant artistic culture--we have secured commitments from Heidelberg, Germany; Palo, the Philippines; and Linkoping, Sweden, with more Sister Cities coming on board soon.

Art from all the participating cities will be displayed in public areas in each city. Together, we will confront important issues around climate change and environmental sustainability through the international language of art.

Please scroll down for information on our participating artists. 

A work by Palo Alto's participating artist, the Berlin-trained illustrator and muralist, Lorenz Sonneman.

Learn More About the Project

Oaxaca, Mexico

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Porfirio Juárez
Originally from Oaxaca, Porfirio Juarez's passion for painting and drawing began at age 6. An architect by profession, he draws on images and memories from his childhood to create colorful, geometric works that often evoke Oaxacan fables and ancient legends.

Porfirio's work celebrates an ongoing Neighbors Abroad rainwater capture initiative in Yaxe, an indigenous village near our Sister City.  Through the efforts of Isla Urbana, Vidas y Sueños, and Neighbors Abroad, as well as other charitable organizations, Yaxe now has 50 rainwater capture tanks supporting the community, with more to come. 

Porfioro's art will adorn many of the water tanks in the village of Yaxe.

Palo Alto, California

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Lorenz Sonneman
Lorenz Sonneman studied art in Berlin, Germany. Since 2016, he has been based in Palo Alto, working as an artist, illustrator, and muralist. Lorenz typically works with ink and paper, or acrylic and canvas.

“Somewhere in my life I was bound to art. As a kid, I was bored: no TV, no video games… only books and pencils kept me occupied on long, family trips traversing the California wilderness. This gap between earth and civilization has always inspired my work. For me, art reaches deep into the Unknown; where awe and beauty dismantle my own solicited ambitions. My cartoonish abstractions and figures layer upon one another to create discoverable symbolism. I draw references from ancient myths and popular culture in an attempt to reconcile the disparate aspects of our nature. Public works and murals are our chance to face history, to be remembered. My hope is to transform our concrete into color and to elicit in each of us the desire for the epiphytic in an already deciphered world.”

Heidelberg, Germany

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Giuseppe Blasotta (right) with then-Palo Alto Mayor Tom DuBois in Heidelberg, Germany

Giuseppe Blasotta
Based in Heidelberg, Germany, Giuseppe Blasotta was born in Foggia, Italy in 1972. 

​"With my work I did not try to imitate products of nature, but to act like the producing nature itself, by creating new forms from the given materials. Like natural objects, my depictions of flowers and landscapes do not need any translation or explanations, but at the same time every work by an author refers to the story of the author himself. These roots in the author's history are, so to speak, the second nature of the work of art. The content that is expressed in an otherwise lifeless object can be of the most varied types, but it always refers to its human origin and thus concerns us all. The unity of the work and the processes of creativity of art don’t come from the materials of the work, but from its history."

The Heidelberg Palo Alto Club is partnering with The Water is Right Foundation on this project. The Foundation supports equitable and affordable distribution of water. The foundation provides innovative water treatment plants for communities lacking accessible clean water, creates jobs, and organizes cleanups.

Palo, Leyte, Philippines

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Christian Cabillo, 25, is an artist from Palo, Leyte, Philippines. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Architecture from Eastern Visayas State University. 
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His artwork has won awards in regional and national art competitions, including the Government Service Security System National Competition in 2021 and the Philippine National Police Sining Bayanihan Arts and Cultural Competition.

He’s inspired by several artists including Pablo Picasso. He loves landscape painting and still life using oil and acrylic paints on canvas.