All posts tagged: Community mosaic making

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 …

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 …

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 …