AUSTIN, Texas — Dozens and dozens of slender, football-shaped tiles carry messages of love and strength for Kerr County.
“We don’t heal in isolation but in community.”
“Live like Jane.”
“You’ll never walk alone.”
“Live and love like Nay Nay.”
These tiles, handmade by Austin and Kerr County citizens, will come together next year to form a large mosaic mural through the Kerr County Love Project — one meant to celebrate the resilience of the community following the deadly Fourth of July floods.
“The Kerr County Love Project is a year-long project that is healing-centered engagement, and it’s different than a memorial,” said Wanda Montemayor, an Austin-based art therapist and the project’s clinical director. “It’s a healing mural, so it’s really about us coming together in the moments that we have together to make this mural. What as an art therapist, I know, is that art goes way deeper than words.”
Mosaic tiles to be painted and put together for a mural honoring the history of Kerr County and the lives lost in the flooding on July 4, 2025. (Spectrum News 1/Hannah Maguire)
This past summer, more than 130 people died in massive floods that swept the Hill Country and the Guadalupe River. Among the tragic losses were 25 young girls and two teen counselors attending Camp Mystic, a private Christian camp based along the Guadalupe.
Montemayor said it’s important for affected children, parents, teachers and first responders to engage in non-traditional healing such as art therapy. When creating a tile for the mural at a group event, participants can process and share about their experience and struggles.
It’s a process that already proved beneficial in Montemayor’s Uvalde Love Project, which began shortly after the town’s tragic school shooting in May 2022 and resulted in a final mural at Jardin de Los Heroes Park in August.
Montemayor said the Uvalde Love Project, though not specifically named, even influenced a government report of findings and recommendations that stated community-based non-traditional therapy has tremendous benefits.
“When people make the tile, many times they’re just in their own mind. They’re in a place of reflection, they might be talking… that distress is in the air, but you’re having a positive experience connecting,” Montemayor said. “Some people will be making their tile and they’re not crying, but as soon as they share it, it becomes real. That’s the integration.”
Montemayor also noted a distinction between the Uvalde and Kerr County tragedies that informs the healing process. Uvalde had someone to blame, she said, while the Kerrville area suffered a natural disaster in a place where nature is a draw for people who live there.
“Making peace with nature after nature devastated you is a hard thing, and so that’s really where we’re seeing some of the unique aspects of this project,” Montemayor said.
While the project hosts tile-making events for all ages, teachers and children are two particularly important groups. Trauma can deeply affect developing minds, and teachers can reach many in the community. Montemayor is currently working to form the project’s team of lead art educators in Kerr County.
“My second language is to work with art educators,” said Montemayor, who has 23 years of experience in middle school public education. “Art is a really safe place for kids to process their experience, so if we can help these art educators deepen in the community, then we’re just touching so many thousands and thousands of lives.”
In October, with the help of funding from the Kendra Scott Foundation, Montemayor and her project team will install the estimated 750 to 1,000 square foot mural in Louis Hays Park, pending city approval. The piece will highlight Kerrville’s history, from its famous tortilla factory to its distinctive cypress trees to teepees representing the first indigenous tribes who lived there. It also honors Florence Butt, who founded H-E-B in Kerrville, and the Schreiner family, who established Kerrville’s first bank and first electric light and power plant.
Some of the mosaic tiles to be featured in the mural honoring the lives lost in the Kerr County floods. (Spectrum News 1/Hannah Maguire)
Montemayor said Kerr County officials also asked for the Guadalupe River and its camps, which began as tuberculous treatment centers, to be included. In the sky, roughly 130 glass mosaic birds will represent the lives lost in the flood.
“It’s really meant to show the resilience and strength of the community and the awesome history,” Montemayor said.