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Of checkers, flowers and hummingbirds

Published by gertrud

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:   This is a 5 year community art project to decorate the city garage entirely with mosaics featuring …

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 …

Mosaic for Awareness Raising on Climate Change Beijing

Published by gertrud

Between November 21 and April 22 a Climate Change Community Mosaic was created in Beijing. It was  a wonderful project that kept us busy and active for this good course – awareness raising about climate change. The whole project started with a tweet by the GLOBAL ASSEMBLY that wants to involve people’s direct voices in the COP discussions – compared to representatives voices as it is until now- and inspire and enable ordinary citizens to discuss climate change policies amongst themselves. One medium of this discussion shall be art. Together with 3 other women we organized our own “Global Assembly” of the international community of Beijing and out of the discussion on that day December 8, 2021 the Climate Change Community Mosaic was created. It was absolutely overwhelming to have soo many people interested to participate to make the mosaic with their own hands, to search for an appropriate location and to give general support in translating between Chinese and English, writing content, creating publications, installing and hosting the inauguration. It’s almost impossible to describe the …