Boyle Heights Mural Honors Gloria Molina

Visit to a Work-in-Progress

Michael Sedano

Margaret Garcia and Arthur Carrillo work in the a.m. coolness.

The artists paint on the shaded wall quickly, racing the sun and summer heat that will bring the morning’s work to a close. The wall belongs to Los Angeles’ cultural treasure, Casa 0101 (link https://casa0101.org). The Margaret Garcia mural is one way the theatre presents a permanent tribute to Southern California’s most successful barrier-buster and community organizer.

 

Molina’s political career made history. The first Chicana elected to the California Assembly. The first Chicana elected to the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors. A strong, outspoken supporter of the arts, Molina led the effort to create and fund La Plaza de Cultura y Artes museum near the city’s Olvera Street attraction. The County named its center-city parkland Gloria Molina Grand Park. A career fighting for social justice merits such honors.

Carrillo, a skilled photorealist, unmasks a clean line.

This career informs public opinion of Gloria Molina. It’s an impressive narrative that muralist Margaret Garcia doesn’t pursue. Molina studied painting with Garcia, and the two women were friends. Garcia designs Casa 0101’s tribute mural focused upon what Gloria Molina loved so dearly. Quilts carry powerful symbolic messages; a quilt represents creativity, productivity, community, unity, usefulness. Choosing the quilting square motif to honor public powerhouse Gloria Molina is a way to depict the humanity at the essence of community service and elective office.

 

Quilting squares are the dominant motif of Garcia’s design. I don’t know enough about the names blocks used in quilt-making. The left-hand part of the monumental wall depicts a quilt. Its squares and blocks form step pyramids, joined bottom to bottom in mirror reflective symmetry. I don’t know if this pattern has a name, if Gloria Molina’s favorite quilting technique used this pattern. People with that kind of knowledge will appreciate the mural all the more, and go órale, Margaret Garcia, unseen detail in front of our eyes!

Margaret Garcia smiles in a moment's respite.

Respite ends, painting resumes.

 

The mosaic of quilting patterns ends with a rose in the form of an upraised fist of power. The flower introduces Molina’s smiling portrait to the forefront. 

 

Vibrant power glows across the leader’s visage. Garcia’s pallet works magic on the scene, particularly eloquently on Molina. Gloria Molina seems to rise from the wall. A viewer has to step back to assess the fulness of the tribute.

 

Molina, the quilter, smiles at the patterns on the left. Sky and clouds looking like crashing waves fill the background behind the portrait, the whorl of color and movement cover the last few linear feet and complete the statement. Gloria Molina has transitioned from things of this world to the great beyond.

Dr. Thelma T. Reyna enjoys a preview of the mural.

Margaret Garcia and Arthur Carrillo work diligently with a moderate sense of urgency. The official unveiling of the completed mural comes at the end of August.

Every work of public arte in Los Angeles stands at risk of vandalism.