Los Gatos residents may have noticed a new cat in town – made of aluminum.
The third of five cat sculptures marking major entry points to Los Gatos was installed earlier this month, this one on Winchester Boulevard between Highway 85 and Knowles Avenue. It’s part of a public art project sponsored by the town that goes back to around 2018.
“It’s a public art project that the art and culture commission developed with the goal of welcoming visitors into Los Gatos,” said Maureen Capon-Javey, who was chair of the commission when the project began.
The newest sculpture joins two others, one located near Highway 9 and Alberto Way that was installed in 2021 and the other at Lark Avenue and Highway 17 that was installed in 2022. The town council approved the installation of the last three sculptures in the series in February 2023, at a cost of $37,000 each.
Funding for the project comes partially from the town, Capon-Javey said, but also from commercial developers in Los Gatos. She said developers are required to either make a payment to the Los Gatos Public Art Fund or commission public artwork in town, and either option must be equivalent to 1% of the construction value of the development project.
“When we developed this [project], there weren’t many really big commercial developments in town, and now there are a lot more,” she said. “So this little percentage for [the] art program fund is going to go a long way to help us pick up some more projects going forward.”
The commission initially solicited proposals for the project from artists around the country and in South America, Capon-Javey said. But the commission, along with members of the community, eventually settled on Seattle-based artist Matt Babcock, who was tasked with putting together all five sculptures.
Babcock said the project it combines his interest in sculpting animals with the time he spent working at a sign fabrication shop years ago.
“I had been looking for an opportunity to sort of do something that incorporated both culture and signage, so this was a perfect fit for that,” he said.
Babcock said his design for the statue incorporates both the technology industry that he saw as so prevalent in the area, as well as the “1950s feel” that he noticed in the town’s architecture and scenery when he visited.
The final two statues in the project are set to be installed by 2026 along Blossom Hill Road near the Terraces and at Highway 9 and Massol Avenue, though the exact locations have yet to be decided, Capon-Javey said.
Babcock said he hopes the sculptures become mascots for Los Gatos. The form of the sculptures is more of a wildcat than a domestic one, an homage to the town’s roots as a habitat for mountain lions, and he hopes that visitors and residents alike will remember that.
“I hope that people will take away from it some kind of connection to nature and some kind of connection to the area,” he said.
