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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 …

Mosaics of Bergama/Pergamon

Published by gertrud

Many of you know the famous “Pergamon Museum” in Berlin. Where is this place Pergamon? I had the chance to visit the archeological museum of the ancient city Pergamon in Turkey this summer again. 7 years ago during my mosaic conservation studies at the University Ankara I spent one day with the conservation team of Bergama Archeological Project. During that day I was given permission to photograph the mosaics from the masque mosaic floor which originates from 2.c AD. The mosaic is beautifully preserved and presented in the building Z on the Acropolis hill of the Archeological Museum Bergama . It was a joy coming back after all this time. The gallery below is a mix from my recent photos and the photos of 2007. Enjoy!   On our stroll through the ruins one small detail took my attention. I saw a braided pattern in a stone carving on one of the unearthed pieces exhibited which reminded me of a similar pattern in ancient mosaics. Funnily I could find this detail in one of the …