individual panels continue to have a public life around Ventura. Some panels were donated and stored at the Pierpont Inn.  Eventually, these stored panels were returned to MB, and stored at her Bell Arts Factory studio.

In 2008 in partnership and under the sponsorship of the City of Ventura the Tortilla Flats Mural was recreated. A new and original public art piece, based on the research of the first mural, was created by the project originators, artist MB Hanrahan and Moses Mora.

The new mural was installed in April 2008, and a street party reception was held on Saturday, May 31st, 2008 from 11am – 2pm. The location of the reception was at the mural site itself, located on Thompson Ave and Figueroa St in Ventura, CA.

 8/2013  The inception and creation of the Tortilla Flats murals: 

In 1993, I was completing the Avenue Liquor mural on Ventura Ave.(-a community mural, now destroyed, with quite a story of its own!)  Moses came by and started painting.  Also working on the mural was an African American artist who was doing research on early African American families in Ventura Co.  Her name is Yvonne Sutton.  Moses was telling her about the Tortilla Flats neighborhood and families he knew of.  I was listening to the stories, and, being a transplant from LA, I had never heard of the Tortilla Flats neighborhood- a neighborhood displaced when the 101 freeway was extended through Ventura Co. I remember saying something like “ that story needs to be a mural!”

Not long after that, the City of Ventura offered the some Artist Fellowship grants..Artist projects could receive a maximum of $5,000.  I contacted Moses, suggesting that we apply.  I am a runner, and had been running by a long nondescript wall enclosing a couple of oil tanks, on lower Figueroa St. across from the Ventura. Co. fairgrounds (Seaside Park, an actual park /baseball field/ horseracing track in the Tortilla Flats days, early 20^th century-1940’s).  The land was owned by Texaco. I contacted them through a number on a sign on the chain link gate. Fortunately, the woman heading their Public Relations dept. was an art appreciator, and realized the PR opportunity in allowing a community mural to be painted on the wall.  I remember that Moses and I were getting the mural written up on a computer at ART City, the night before, and a fax from Texaco, giving us formal approval for the mural location arriving the day the mural proposal was due.  As it was, we received only $1500.00 for our ambitious project-a 500’ mural based on images from the Tortilla Flats neighborhood.

We figured we would find pictures in the local history museum. However, when we visited the local Ventura Art and History museum, it became apparent that the neighborhood had not been documented.  We realized we were going to have to research the story ourselves.  Armed with an aerial view photograph of neighborhood area (roughly south of Main St, to the Ventura river as a western border, to the Ocean, to the pier as an eastern border ), a tape recorder and a video camera, we began our interviews of Tortilla Flats residents. Our first interview was with Buddy Gibson, Simon Camarillo and Johnnie Barrios, at Tony’s Pizza –one original business that survived the neighborhoods removal.

  Moses and his family moved from Tortilla Flats when he was a year old.  None the less, his family was known to residents, and he knew family names.  This was critical in gaining the confidence of residents, many of whom hadn’t had contact with each other since the neighborhood dispersion.  Moses primarily asked questions during the interviews, (while I videotaped the session);  where did you live, where did you go to school, where did you shop, how did you have fun, and what did your parents do?  We began reconstructing a map of the neighborhood- collecting pictures, collecting stories, collecting names.

We became amateur oral historians.  One interview led to another, word was getting around that we were collecting stories and photos.  We had the great fortune of hooking up with Suzanne Lawrence, a docent at the museum, who also performed historical reenactments.  She recognized the value of what we were doing, beyond gathering material for our mural.  She volunteered to transcribe the audio taped oral histories, which were, at the time of the first mural, over 100 hours.  We continue to this day to record and transcribe (thanks to Punky-full name please) oral histories, and to collect photos and relevant historic materials.  This thanks to the Tortilla Flats Reunion committee, another branch of the Legacy project that developed from the early days of the first mural. As was mentioned, many of the families had lost contact with each other, since having to relocate when the Freeway came through in the fifties.  Most of the folks we were interviewing were born in the 1920’s and 30’s.  Moses’ generation were considered  “youngsters”.  Many families relocated up the Avenue, to the projects. The interview process was reconnecting people from the neighborhood.  We collected stories and images, and I say images as many scenes existed only as stories and descriptions, for a year before any mural design or any painting commenced. People lacked the discretionary income and equipment to take pictures of every detail of their lives, as we able to do today. This was a lower income, mixed race and religion neighborhood, where people spoke Spanish, English, and Chinese.

In the course of collecting oral histories, (we had yet to make a drawing or put paint to a wall,) we decided to use the 1500$ grant money to throw what turned out to be the first Tortilla Flats Reunion, in Nicholby’s Nightclub, then located on the corner of Oak and Main Sts., downtown Ventura.  We brought Lalo Alcaraz, (sp?), a cross over Mexican American favorite of the residents’ era, to perform at what became an annual reunion event that continues today.

We were fortunate to receive donations of paint and supplies for the mural.  The wall was already primed when Texaco determined that it was going to sell the property in the future, necessitating the installation of plywood on the wall.  This plywood was of construction grade, not the marine density plywood one would normally utilize for exterior mural work.  The installation labor was provided by volunteers and Texaco employees.

When the mural was finally designed and approved by the City, I was able to scale up the drawing on the wall. Moses became the official “Project Coordinator”, and MB the “Artistic Director”.  We would agree to a couple days a week that we would be laying out the paints and coordinating mural painting on the wall.  Folks would just show up.  As time went by, we attracted regulars, and some accomplished local artists, who would fine tune the community painting. A few of these lead artists I recall are Judy Suzuki, Lisa Kelly, Shawna ? and Eric Richards- but there were others.  I too picked out a few panels and painted them practically single handedly.  At the end, I tightened up the painting by adding outlines.  On a few occasions, we altered a panel because someone came by the wall with an archival image or story that made for an image more authentic.  It was a very powerful and sometimes grueling experience, as we were both working at jobs in addition to the mural project.  We decided to give people the opportunity to sponsor a panel for $100, and  thereby raised some expense cash.  It is possible to see these sponsors’ names on the panels that still exist.  We had also made the decision that the mural was to be self guided walking tour, of sorts.  Each panel had  a title and some narration, in both Spanish and English, hand painted by our talented artist ally Kelly Man. The quality of the first mural was uneven, but heartfelt.  We logged over 100 participant painters in the year that it took to complete the mural.  The opening ceremony was 1995.  In the course of the mural painting year, Moses had been in a car accident and injured his back.  Still, he always showed up to coordinate the painting, even while walking with the assist of a cane!

The mural was up for 5 years when the elements of sun and moisture took its toll on the substandard materials we used on the first mural. It was never seriously graffittied on while it was up.  Expansion and contraction of the plywood was causing it to delaminate, and paint was chipping off.  Rather than let the mural further deteriorate, we decided to take the mural down and disperse panels to who ever wanted to cart them away.  In one day the mural was down.  Some panels still exist in people’s homes and garages.  Many folks eventually donated the panels to the Pierpont Inn, where an employee, a woman interested in local history was able to store them.  The time came when these panels could no longer be stored there, and miraculously enough, the remaining panels made their way BACK to our studio at Bell Arts Factory.  We will be displaying a few of the better preserved panels at the VCAM  Exhibition. The life of the first mural, completion through dismantling was 1995-2000.

After the mural came down, we would hear, from time to time, something to the effect that the Tortilla Flats mural would be funded and resurrected as a public art project.  Eventually, in 2002, I believe, a decision was made to improve the Figueroa St. corridor from downtown to the ocean. A percentage for the Arts condition in the funding created the opportunity for a new Tortilla Flats mural to be designed for the desolate space under the 101 Freeway overpass at Figueroa and Thompson.  Referred to as the “Figueroa Improvement project”, that is how the second mural came to exist in the shadow of the Freeway that caused the demise of the neighborhood depicted.  The amount of money allocated was 32,000.00 for the art.  There were no existing surfaces under the freeway, and CalTrans disallowed any structure to be connected to the freeway structure.  In addition, any “walls” would have to be see-through, and not easily scaled.

We tried to abbreviate the 500‘ mural, but ultimately felt that to edit the story or images, as such, weakened the strength of the mural artistically and defeated its purpose content-wise. Instead, we divided the images into 4 loose categories-the neighborhood, the environment,  commerce, and recreation. We developed the concept of 4 16’ high fabricated steel support structures, faced with perforated steel.  The “mural walls” would be painted different colors, and each had a distinctive silhouette   that echoed the shaped, painted, MDP* wooden mural panels that would be attached to it. We decided to chose some of our archived  photographs, and have them printed on ceramic tiles.  We “framed” the photo tiles with mosaics containing broken dishes and small artifacts contributed by Tortilla Flats residents. Though more ambitious (and expensive) than the City had been anticipating, our proposal for the new and improved mural was compelling enough to be approved.  We however, never received any more funding than originally offered. The mural images were redesigned and scaled to the new venue, and this time, MB painted all the panels.  We began work on the new mural in 2003.  The new mural was dedicated in 2005…so now, with this endeavor of presenting the History and Legacy of the Tortilla Flats neighborhood, we have been involved in this project for 20 years.

*Marine Density Plywood

From Moses:  THE REST OF THE STORY: What we thought was going to be a simple art project, a mural in particular, turned into a much deeper endeavor. We had no way of knowing how rewarding it would be to 1) uncover deep and rich stories of Ventura’s hidden past and 2) to meet some of the best people Ventura has ever produced.

Armed now, with engaging research and the willingness and talent, we, along with some artist friends created the largest public art piece in the original Tortilla Flats Mural, much enjoyed by a appreciative community in Ventura and beyond.

The project also spawned a Tortilla Flats Reunion Community which to this day continues to sponsor annual events. We continued to interview ex-residents of the old neighborhood for additional stories and photos for our archives. 

As described above the original mural came down in the year 2001. We were not so surprised when in 2004 the City of Ventura sought us out to recreate the mural, because we knew that the project was too good to disappear forever. In May of 2008 the new and improved version of the mural was unveiled to the public for their continued enjoyment and education.

In what is our greatest achievement since the 2008 unveiling the Ventura County Museum is now in the process of producing an exhibit entitled, Tortilla Flats: Last Exit which will be showcased from September 14th to November 23rd, 2013. The selected curators of the exhibit will be the original artists’ MB Hanrahan and Moses Mora.