The Julie Mayer Award, named in honor one of Anaheim’s most dedicated proponents of public art, is AIPP’s highest award. It exempli es all that art can bring to individuals by touching both heart and soul through visual beauty. The 2020 Julie Mayer Award was presented to the JW Marriott, Anaheim Resort.

Opened in the summer of 2020 the JW Marriott, Anaheim Resort welcomes their guests into an environment designed in salute to Orange County’s diverse agricultural history. Anaheim’s equestrian and farming past radiates throughout the property. A thin steel sculpture in the form of a harvester planting a seed adorns the front entrance and plays tricks with the eye as portions of it disappear depending on the angle of the onlooker.

Just outside the lobby, the theme continues with a fully functioning succulent, oral and vegetation garden. The harvest is incorporated into the property’s food and beverage programs providing a seed to table experience from the Hotel’s culinary team. The JW Garden features an innovative augmented reality sculpture garden that brings an inspiring Secret Butterly Garden and Digital Forest to life on top of three steel sculptures by design studio HEAVY.

This first-of-its-kind digital garden experience will transport guests into a serene space to plant seeds of imagination and personalize their fantastical trees. Inside this virtual garden, guests can play amongst digital caterpillars and butter ies, and experience Zen-like sculptures that tell a narrative of a magical plant’s evolution from seed to sapling to tree, and guests are enabled to nurture their trees and grow their relationship with the hotel as high as possible. It is art at a whole new virtual level, a must to be experienced as well as seen.