Mosaic made of art students' passion, dedication

It's a windy Saturday morning at Memorial High School in McAllen and Rina Roberts is fighting a bad cold. But though she sniffles and coughs, there is a task at hand that's more important than fighting the flu - it's 300 feet long.

The mosaic she and her students are making for the city of McAllen is a mighty project indeed. It will take 22 sections to complete the finished picture, a sprawling landscape of Texas terrain, complete with cacti, native plants, silhouettes and a swirling sun. The piece, which will cost about $7,000 or $8,000 to produce, is titled "Starry, Starry Valley," a play on the famous Vincent Van Gogh painting "The Starry Night."

But once she was given the go-ahead and some funds from the McAllen Chamber of Commerce and Keep McAllen Beautiful, Roberts was determined to get the project moving.

Her students started in summer, coming in and working eight hours or longer at a time to create the picture. Every day, four or five students work on it every class period. The mosaic will be installed on Second Street and Hackberry Street in McAllen when complete, which Roberts hopes is by the end of the school year in May.

Roberts estimates that more than 1,000 of work will have been put into the mosaic once it's finished.

Sometimes, her students' ambitions surpass her own abilities.

"If it was up to them, they'd work on it 24/7," she said. Some jump the light blue gates just outside the art room and wait outside the door for her to arrive at 7 a.m., she said.

The project has come to mean so much more to some of the students than simply a picture made of tiles. For 19-year-old Gibran Salinas, the mosaic will be his permanent mark on the city that gave him all he has today.

Salinas, whom Roberts calls her "right hand man" on the project, is a native of Mexcio who came to the United States four years ago unable to communicate with anyone. Salinas said he was taught very little about sign language while attending deaf school in Mexico and came to the United States frustrated with his position in life.

"They used to speak to us in Spanish and not sign. I didn't like it very much," he said via his interpreter Monica Martinez-Hamilton. "In Mexico I wasn't able to do anything, and here I can be in art."

Martinez-Hamilton said like many of the other eight deaf students taking art with Roberts, working on the mosaic has given Salinas invaluable expertise.

"It can be a skill that they use after graduation," she said.

Piece by piece, Salinas is becoming part of the city that helped him find his voice and his confidence. Such is the story for many of the six pairs of skilled hands that work placing the tiles on the sticky mesh fabric before it's mounted onto wet concrete and displayed for all to see. They've given up their Saturdays for a chance to be part of a major undertaking.

So long as there are people willing, Roberts will be there to open the art room door come sniffle or flu.

Sandra Gonzalez covers features and entertainment for The Monitor. You can reach her at (956) 683-4427.