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At the Muzzio

Published by gertrud

  Exactly two years ago I spent 3 weeks with the “Watsonville Brillante” Project in Watsonville/CA to learn from them about large scale community art projects. I will report about it at the International Conference of  SAMA (Society of American Mosaic Artists) and SGGA (American Glass artist society on September 30 in Buffalo/NY. Read about this internship for which I received a scholarship of SAMA.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. On Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays Highschool Students are coming after school to spend a few hours winding down from busy school day breaking and setting mosaic pieces with their AirPods in their ears. When I arrived on September 6 a Croatian board was being started using very small tiles to depict the stitches of a needle work with the typical pattern from Croatia. On Wednesdays is women’s day at the Muzzio. The atmosphere is more chatty! Together with Helga and Suzanne, two Germans I …

Watsonville city garage and casa Batlló

Published by gertrud

What is it with casa Batlló in Barcelona/Spain and the city garage of Watsonville/CA? Casa Batllò in Barcelona is advertised as the “House of inspiration”. The façade of casa Batllò is covered in beautiful mosaic. The city garage of Watsonville/CA is a 5 storie park house (as we Germans say) that shall inspire inhabitants of Watsonville to be involved in ，”Creative Place Making” and contemplate and take pride in their immigration history. It’s grayish white facade is in the process of being covered by beautiful mosaics. Antonio Gaudì designed the casa Batlló between 1904-6 in his modernist style playing with form and colors for interior and exterior. The people of Watsonville designed the mosaics for the mosaics of the city garage building… “Our project Watsonville Brillante aims to represent multi-ethnic patterns of particular family units on the 185 horizontal portions of the garage’s exterior and place each family’s representation next to another family’s representation in such a way that their common heritages overlap with a shared visual pattern. Combined, they will represent our community as …

This little town of mine let it shine

Published by gertrud

…. this verse slightly altered from a song I once sang with my choir comes to my mind being around Kathleen Crocetti and her mosaic projects in Watsonville. Her dream is to make Watsonville the Barcelona of California together with the young community of the 50.000 inhabitants of a small agriculture town situated in the fertile back garden of Monterey Bay/California. A lot of nutrition is produced and exported here on large farms with immigrants hands. Strawberries, lettuce, artichokes, apples you name it have been tended to since over 100 years by many groups of immigrant workers. Some stayed. At the moment 85% of Watsonville’s population is of Mexican heritage. Still the average income here is a quarter less than that of near by Santa Cruz/CA. The difference in between pitoresque coast dwellings like Monterey or Carmel and Watsonville is striking on first sight. In the coast cities individual wealth designs beautiful cost homes and inviting shop fronts and brings in enough tax money to make sturdy wooden public walkways with views of the beautiful …