Youth volunteer David putting finishing touches to the Mosaic depicting symbols of the Scottish, Swedish, Amah Mutsun culture that he mainly crafted
Yesterday afternoon at the Muzzio mosaic workshop the bell rang. It always rings when one of the 4×8” (1x2m) mosaic boards is finished. Everyone stood in awe around the table. The mosaic depicts symbols of 3 cultures: a brown and black checkered and a green thiestel head for Scotland, blue pastell colored flowers on a white background standing for Sweden and a sparkling humming bird representing the Amah Mutsun culture which were the Indian population that lived here around Watsonville for thousands of years before the Spanish came.
The population of Watsonville is characterized by many waves of immigrants that came to work in the agricultural industry since centuries. People from all over the world were drawn to California to make a better living through manual labour on the fields. Now the population of Watsonville is 85% Mexican.
From a small exhibition about the history of immigration and agriculture at the Watsonville public library I took this quote:
Finished Scottish, Swedish, Amah Mutsun Culture board at the Muzzio Mosaic Community Workshop in Watsonville.
This is a 5 year community art project to decorate the city garage entirely with mosaics featuring the cultural roots of the people of Watsonville. Last week I was helping to shape the birds wings 🙂 The Hummingbird in the Amah Mutsun culture stands for the controlled fires they set to their land to promote the growth of seed bearing annuals. The flapping of the wings of the hummingbird resembles the flapping of fans to control fire.
The Muzzio is the city of Watsonville’s community mosaic workshop. Here every afternoon members of the community drop in and help beautifying their city with mosaic works.
The ribbon like horizontal areas of the building sparked the idea to have the community at large participate in sending designs that symbolize their families cultural roots. In a first call for submissions 90 families sent in their designs. But this would only fill half of the segments given by the expansion lines of the concrete elements. So Kathleen wrote a curriculum for Highschool arts students and her fellow arts teachers happily cooperated. In came 50 more submissions. Many families are of mixed heritage. Like in this board: the checkered pattern represents Schottland, the pastel flowers on white background is Swedish and the Hummingbird a symbol of
