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At the Muzzio

Published by gertrud

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 am working on the design featuring a Chinese dragon and a Jewish Star symbols for the family of the main private sponsor of the project. How long will it take? On Sunday I met the Mekiz family of Croatian heritage working on their panel. They submitted the design, sponsored the material and installation costs and now came to spend a creative family afternoon together. …

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 …

My work in China – a retrospective

Published by gertrud

Dear friends, I have physically moved to Berlin now. It’s exciting to be in my home country.  However as always when I move I will not have a studio for at least half a year as my tools and materials are in transition in our container somewhere between Tianjin and Hamburg. I also notice that my soul is still in transition too. The memories from Beijing are kicking in often. Therefor I would like to use this coming weeks to tell you about my work in China. Back there I was using Chinese social media to tell my friends in Beijing about mosaic and my work – therefor this website and my Instagram account didn’t get regular updates. My studio was flourishing in Beijing – I wouldn’t have thought I would get so beautifully busy in all areas of my work – my solely crafted mosaics, the workshops and the community mosaic murals. I have the feeling the years in Beijing were the peak of my career. Let me tell you one after the other. …