Motmot Makeover on Marmion Way

If you've taken the Gold Line between the Highland Park and stops in the last month or so, you've probably asked yourself at least once, "what's the story with the hummingbird house on Marmion Way?"

Well, according to Gerda Govine Ituarte, the large bird painted on the front of the residence at 5427 Marmion Way is actually a Motmot, and the colorful house itself is the product of a joint effort between local and international artists and the residents of the home, the Zuniga family.

Ituarte, who along with her husband Luis Ituarte directs the Pasadena and Tijuana based Border Council of Arts and Culture/Fronterizo de Arte Y Cultura, said the council received a $10,000 grant from the National Association of Latino Arts and Culture to create the Casas Arte Home Intervention Project in Highland Park.

The Border Council of Arts and Culture already has ties to one local artist, Kathy Gallegos, owner of on 131 N. Ave. 50, which made  Highland Park a perfect place to launch their home intervention project in the United States. (The council has already completed work on a pair of homes in Tijuana, Mexico.)

"First of all, we looked at Highland Park because we have a relationship with Avenue 50 Studio and Kathy Gallegos. We wanted to have a neighborhood anchor that had been in community a long time," Ituarte said. "We didn't want to appear to be carpetbaggers."

The concept for the home was developed over a series of meetings between the project's artist Daniel Ruiz and the Zuniga family, who are fourth generation Nicaraguan-Americans with strong cultural roots to their native country.

That explains the Motmot, which is Nicaragua's national bird, as well as the four black volcanos and the poem by famous Nicaraguan poet Gioconda Belli on the rear side of the neighbor's garage.

"The project comes out of developing relationships with the homeowners," Ituarte said. "What we wanted to do was create beauty and use art as a connector to build relationships in Highland Park.

That desire to build relationships around art is precisely why the Border Council chose to work on a home adjacent the Gold Line--it's hard to miss.

"Highland Park is the only part of the Gold Line where we can actually see the homes as you go by on the train, and we wanted to engage riders of the gold line, Ituarte said. "Maybe they might want to come back and take pictures or ring the doorbell. It's created quite a lot of attention; it's like a bright light along Marmion Way."

The border council is hoping to complete a second restoration project on Marmion Way this this year, Ituarte said, which she hopes will turn as many heads as the first one has.

"We want to be respectful of the neighborhood, the family and Highland Park in general," she said. "People live here and we want them to feel like the art project is value added to the neighborhood."