Golden Gate Village in Marin City features two new public art installations honoring the community’s history and culture.
The project is a collaboration between the nonprofit group Performing Stars of Marin and the Dominican University of California, San Rafael. The works, found on the pickleball courts and on trash cans, are inspired by Marinship staff and Black quilt artists.
“I wanted everyone to know the history of Marin City so that the legacy would always be on people’s faces, always present and never forgotten,” said Felecia Gaston, founder of Performing Stars.
The murals painted on the trash cans on Thursday were designed by first- through sixth-graders from the Performing Stars program and students from the university’s honors program. The trash cans on Drake Avenue were decorated with quilter-inspired motifs.
“I tried to make smaller models of the trash cans that they might use,” said Lynn Sondag, the director of the Honors program at Dominican University. “I think they made the connection to quilting, but they also went with free forms, but it’s kind of in the same spirit.”
Sondag said the project had about 20 participants and the ratio of children to students was about 1:1. To get inspiration for their murals, the children accompanied the students on a field trip to the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive to see an exhibit about the Great Migration.
On Tuesday, students painted the edges of the neighborhood’s pickleball courts with sayings from people who moved to the area to work in the shipyards. Gaston said she found the quotes while collecting oral histories of Marin City.
“As a professor, I’m just grateful that we have these opportunities,” Sondag said. “The Dominican students are learning a lot about community and about community-based art and how it brings people together.”
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