GILROY
– A painting by a long-time Gilroy educator is giving some
middle school students a vibrant lesson on their school’s historic
namesake.
GILROY – A painting by a long-time Gilroy educator is giving some middle school students a vibrant lesson on their school’s historic namesake.
Artist Carol Peters colorfully captured the likeness of Ascencion Solorsano, the Ohlone Indian medicine woman for whom Gilroy’s flagship middle school was named, and donated the portrait to the school.
Peters encountered the only existing photograph – blurred and black-and-white – of Ascencion (Ah-SEN-see-OWN) Solorsano during another project and later painted her “to get her off my back,” she said.
Peters was working on illustrations for “Images of America: Gilroy,” by Claudia Salewske, and conducted extensive research on the Ohlone Indians, Gilroy’s first residents. Ascencion was the last full-blooded member of the tribe and called Rosanna Street home.
“(Her face) haunted me, it just wouldn’t leave me Ohlone,” deadpanned Peters when she presented the painting at a school board meeting earlier this month. “And I really felt connected, and I don’t know why.”
A few weeks later, Peters, who taught at Gilroy High School for 30 years before retiring recently, finally took paint to canvas. Once she got started, she truly enjoyed the project.
“It has a lot of symbolism in it, because I wanted the colors to mean something,” Peters said. She especially wanted to draw on Ascencion’s respected position as a medicinal healer.
“She was a woman and an Indian, and in this day and age, women still aren’t that powerful,” Peters said. “To have all that wisdom and respect among the people of Gilroy, even today, is really something.”
Peters formally presented the painting to Solorsano students Tuesday evening, during an awards ceremony.
She detailed for them the process of painting Ascencion Solorsano, who died in 1930, and the symbolism behind it.
“She had to have a lot of compassion for the people that she treated, and she was a speaker, so she had to have that presence to go in front of people and speak,” Peters said in an interview. “She was wise beyond her years, I think, an old soul.”
Green was the first color she squeezed on her pallet, to represent the herbs and plants that Ascencion used to heal.
Brown is the predominant color in Ascencion’s face.
“The brown was the earth because (the Ohlones) planted crops, and that’s where they got their nourishment,” Peters said.
She used a broad two-inch brush to create forceful, broad strokes on Ascencion’s face.
“I wanted to define the features,” Peters said. “She had a real angular face, she was a strong woman. The angles and the roughness of her face depict the hard life on the land the Indians endured and her inner strength.”
Mixed with that strength was a compassion for the people Ascencion cured, which Peters tried to express in the eyes.
“Through the eyes, I tried to show that wisdom that intensity and intelligence,” she said. “She was the last full-blooded Ohlone speaker. Imagine a woman with that much power and respect in her time. Wise and intelligent and unafraid – her eyes held the secrets of her tribe.”
Because Peters envisioned Ascencion as being equally energetic as stoic, she used the healer’s hair to depict her history and passion.
“I wanted to put the energy in there, so I put in the red, white and blue because these were the Native Americans, the first Americans,” Peters said.
Yellow is also shown in her hair, much like the sun would have reflected on Ascencion as she practiced the Ohlone tradition of shouting greetings to the daybreak.
“In the morning, they would get up and they would thank the sun for warming them and thanking the sun for giving them crops to grow, which they needed to live,” Peters said.
“And if you think about it, red, yellow and blue are the primary colors, primary meaning first, and the Ohlones were the first residents of Gilroy.”
The name of Ascencion Solorsano Middle School was selected by a special committee and approved by the school board for its local, historic relevance.
Peters hopes her painting will make that relevance come alive for Solorsano students for years to come.
“Maybe that’s another legend that she’s passing on through me,” she said. “And then if the kids are there and they look at it, they’ll be able to understand something about the Indians that were here first and why the school was named after her, and a little bit about Gilroy history. Being a teacher, maybe I was the one to convey it.”
Solorsano Principal Sal Tomasello said he has yet to decide where to hang Peters’ painting. At the school’s dedication ceremony in October, Ascencion Solorsano’s relatives presented the school with a framed portrait of their matriarch. One of the pictures will likely hang in Tomasello’s office while another oversees the foyer, he said.
He marveled at Peters’ gift.
“It was all on her own,” Tomasello said. “She did it from just a black-and-white Xeroxed copy out of a book. She had nothing in color, so this is her version of this woman and the life that she led and the people in this community will appreciate that.”
