Martin Sanchez, 41, stands in his chapel made of recycled beer bottles behind Sanchez's restaurant, Tio's Tacos, in Riverside. But customers entering the parking lot behind the restaurant are met by a collection of artworks that Sanchez, 41, has been expanding for almost 10 years. Next to the parking lot, patrons can walk underneath cooling streams of water flowing from a fountain garden made of broken pieces of clay and old pipes, discarded bicycles, dolls and other items.
Against a wall near the parking lot, two human figures catch the eye. They're made from topiary wire filled with Barbie dolls, perfume bottles and pipe elbows. Passers-by chuckle when they notice the water flowing through the anatomically correct male and female figures.
Inside the restaurant, Sanchez has created tile mosaics of sea creatures such as lobsters and marlins. The mosaics are everywhere, covering the tables and floors. I even take things from nature and arrange them so that they look like something appealing.
Sanchez's evolving art might one day be compared to the Watts Towers in Los Angeles, said Daniel Foster, executive director of the Riverside Art Museum. Italian immigrant Simon Rodia built the towers -- two of which are almost 100 feet tall -- out of discarded material, decorating them with pieces of bottles and tiles. Sanchez said he wants to leave behind a legacy like the Watts Towers.
It hasn't grown to the scale of the Watts Towers, but only more time is needed, Foster said. Some of Sanchez's assemblage art could be put in a museum, said Cordova, who has been a guest curator at the Riverside Art Museum and the Riverside Metropolitan Museum. It's an amazing jewel of Riverside that most people who live here don't even know exists, Cordova said.
Sanchez said his artwork represents his impoverished childhood in Sahuayo, a town in Michoac n, Mexico: the plaza where he shined shoes, the water hole where he used to bathe and the bottles and bottle caps that were his toys. Sometimes I think to myself: 'How can I throw this away when there are people in Mexico who don't even have anything?' Sanchez said in Spanish.
Nowadays, when you buy a kid a toy, they use it once then they throw it away. But not me. Sanchez was the eighth child in a family with 16 children -- 13 boys and three girls.
His father died when he was 4 and his mother didn't earn enough to sustain the family. When he was 6, Sanchez started shining shoes to earn money. He and his brothers also washed cars and carried groceries for small tips, he said.
With no money for toys, the Sanchez children pretended that bottle caps were toy cars, and they would race the cars on the dirt floor of their home. Sanchez came to the United States in 1984. He struggled at first, selling oranges in East Los Angeles, working in factories and making extra money by selling tacos.
He became a legal resident during the 1986 federal amnesty. In 1992, Sanchez quit factory work and persuaded the owner of a Mexican seafood restaurant to let him sell tacos out of a corner of the establishment. Eventually, he raised enough money to buy the place, Sanchez said.
Now, he lives in the house next door with his wife, Concepcion Sanchez, 38, and three daughters: Stephanie, 16, Kimberly, 12, and Maiten, 1. The guy who used to own the restaurant used to tell me that I was going to own it one day because he saw how hard I worked, Sanchez said. This is the dream of a Mexican who immigrated to the United States.
'Thanks to God' Sanchez has built his art with the help of his brother, Leonardo Sanchez, 47, and cousins Jesus Fajardo, 49, and Salvador Sanchez, 42. Sanchez said a small chapel behind the restaurant is one of their most popular attractions. Visitors come to pray and sign their names in a logbook inside the chapel, which is patterned after the Catholic church in Mexico where he and his wife married.
The chapel's frame was welded from bed frames and the walls built of glass bottles stacked on top of each other and held together with mortar. It took more than 3,000 bottles, four men and about two months to construct the chapel, he said. Only the ceramic saints on the windows and angels on the altar are new.
Everything else is recycled, Sanchez said. This chapel is in thanks to God for the intelligence he has given me, he said. Demetria Espinoza, 55, of Riverside, said she was surprised by the chapel.
It's something that attracts me to this place because I'm very religious, said Espinoza, who works as a cook for the Santa Ana Unified School District. Her daughter, Demetria Demi Espinoza, 22, a student at Cal State San Bernardino, said she ate at the restaurant once and fell in love with the fountains and the gardens. And, I think the artwork is just amazing, she said.
Sanchez said he spends about 10 hours a day creating, but he doesn't consider it work. This relaxes me because it's my hobby ..
. I enjoy coming up with new ideas, he said. I will not stop making this art until I die.
Reach Juan Saucedo at 951-368-9661 or jsaucedo@PE.com Martin Sanchez, 41, stands in his chapel made of recycled beer bottles behind Sanchez's restaurant, Tio's Tacos, in Riverside.
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