A mural first done at the Morro Bay Library in 1985 has been needing an update.
“So we thought, well, it’s turning 40, maybe we need to start figuring out if we need to do some restoration on it because we were losing a lot of tiles,” said Vickie Seymour, Morro Bay Friends of the Library president.
Tiles were being lost specifically on the top.
Joan Decker has been a part of the Morro Bay Friends of the Library organization for years and says the restoration is important because it tells the history of explorer Juan Cabrillo, the indigenous people of the land, and looks into the future with Halley’s comet.
“So it’s a story of the past, and the present, and the future, and it really speaks to the city, and it’s part of the city, so yes, restoring it is very meaningful to all of us, I think," Decker said.
There is also a new plaque on the right side of the mural, commemorating the late original artist, Peter Ladochy.
“He was originally from a European country, and then his family moved to a Central America Country, and then he came to California, so you see a lot of the figure of all those different societies in his work,” Decker said.
Friends of the Library members say Ladochy held a class where about 100 people of all ages worked together to create the original mural.
“They actually glued the pieces on the cartoons and those cartoons were put onto the wall kind of in a big puzzle piece kind of pattern and so actually the people, citizens actually created the mural, literally," Seymour said.
The 650-square-foot mural cost $30,000 to restore.
“We had saved up a lot of money, but the funds that we used are from donations from our patrons, from memberships, they’re also just from individuals,” Seymour said.
