Monday, August 6, 2012

Remembering The Tongva in Santa Fe Springs

Lynn Goodpasture created ten mosaics titled "Remembering the Tongva", now installed at the site of a Tongva village, Chokiishngna. Chokiishngna is Santa Fe Springs, today, and the site has a gated housing development on it.

I posted a map of known Tongva villages in Los Angeles County a while back. Chokiishngna was not on it.

The picture at left is from Lynn Goodpasture's website.

Where did I find the second picture, of the Coastal Live Oak with Woodpeckers? Mosaica, the same foundry in Montreal that has created all of the lovely mosaics on Los Angeles' Expo Line Metro Rail. They are busy up there!  These were fabricated in 2009. And the background was not complete when this picture was taken.

Here's what the artist says about this public art work:

These 10 individual mosaics explore indigenous flora & fauna that were integrated into the Tongva way of life and are still found today in the Los Angeles region. The mosaics are situated at the 5 pedestrian entryways of the Villages at Heritage Springs, Santa Fe Springs. Eleven bronze & opalescent glass lanterns, which coordinate with the mosaics, are located at 3 main driveway entrances. The pedestrian and vehicular gates were designed to complement the mosaics and lanterns. 

To see how these mosaics look mounted, you'll have to go to this page on the artist's website.  The pictures are done in pairs--two pictures of butterflies, two of the woodpeckers, the herons, the marsh wrens in the tules, etc.

At each entrance of the Village complex at Heritage Springs, two almost-matching mosaics sit on either side of iron gate designed to look more like reeds or plant stems, rather than a gate  Five entrances in all. Very lovely.

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