Student artist's installation finds home at Fuse

Alaina Burnham Photo: Fuse's Coffee Shop displays Robert Juarez's piece for customers to view as they walk in and enjoy their drinks.

The inside of Fuse Coffee Shop in Downtown Troy has recently been adorned with a 14-foot sculpture created by a Troy University student on a mission to raise environmental awareness.

The collaboration came about when Fuse owner, Adam Vinson, was told to check out the piece created by Roberto Juarez, a senior graphic design major from Troy, Alabama, during the International Art Center’s senior thesis. The sculpture made an immediate impact on Vinson, who then reached out to Juarez and set up what he believes to be a great opportunity for all parties involved.

“It was a massive monolithic tower that impressed and inspired me immediately,” Vinson said. “I knew I had to have something cool, also being local and a university student was just the icing.”

Vinson said the inspiration for displaying the piece was purely collaborative and aesthetic.

For Juarez, though, the piece means a little more than just an opportunity to decorate a coffee shop. It’s an environmentalist statement.

"My biggest inspiration for the piece was honestly overconsumption,” Juarez said. “We as a society are extremely wasteful in many different aspects but this mural in particular highlights the technology industry.”

Upon Vinson reaching out, Juarez realized he had been given the chance to spread his message to a larger audience than those who follow his Instagram or visit Troy University’s International Arts Center for the senior showcase.

“I want the customers to feel inspired to make a change as the mural makes a pro-environmentalist statement that places Mother Earth on a pedestal,” Juarez said.

Of course, it’s easy to get caught up in all of the deep meanings given to art, but the means of creation are often just as innovative or impactful as the sentiment behind it. Juarez believes this is the case for his piece, which takes a different approach than is typical of similar works.

“Art can be created and translated in many different forms that don’t include traditional paint and canvas,” Juarez said. “I had to disassemble large quantities of electronic waste and look at them in a different light as once they were scattered pieces, they then became my main medium.”

He related this process to that of putting together a puzzle, nicely accenting Vinson’s vision of using the piece to bring the university and the community together.

“’Fusing’ a little of Troy University’s talent, skill, imagination, and creativity with the city, and the community that surrounds it,” Vinson said.