Karen Quincy Loberg / Star staff Ventura College ceramics students, from left, Melanie Hirdler, Brenda Burgess and Diana Farrell discuss plans for their next mural, which is slated to stay on campus.

Interlocking pieces of Ventura are soaking up the sun right now near Havana, Cuba, thanks to an art teacher and 15 students at Ventura College.

During the fall semester, art teacher Myra Toth shepherded a group of advanced students as they created a ceramic mural now on display near Havana. The 4-by-4-foot mural is the first installment on an international art exchange wall right outside of the artists' village of Jaimanitas, just outside of Havana.

The Ventura College art students named their mural "El Arbol de Amistad," or "Tree of Friendship."

"It's very symbolic," said Bill Metcalf of Newbury Park, one of the students who helped create the mural, "people exchanging from one country to the other regardless of their respective governments or politics."

Toth became involved in the project through a photographer friend in Ojai, where Toth's studio is located. The photographer had been in contact with world-renowned Cuban ceramicist José Rodríguez Fuster, whose studio is in Jaimanitas. She told Toth that Fuster was interested in starting an international art exchange project with murals from different spots around the world. Would Toth and her class like to participate?

Toth thought that it would be a perfect fall semester project for 15 of her more advanced ceramics students. So beginning in fall of 2007, the students put their heads together and came up with the idea to create a "tree of life" ceramic mural. Each of the 15 would craft a tile roughly one foot square. When all the tiles were completed, they would fit together to create the mural.

As they formed and fired the ceramic tiles for their "tree of

friendship" mural, the group found other things taking shape.

"We as a group became very connected as a family," Toth said. "We became dependent on each other. We needed each other to make it successful.

"That's how it is in Cuba," Toth said. "They can't depend on the government, so they depend on each other."

Each artist created his or her tile with the ultimate objective of creating a whole piece that would be greater than the sum of its parts.

Brenda Burgess, 57, of Ventura contributed a tile textured to depict a swatch of ocean. Diana Farrell, 53, of Ventura sculpted three Monarch butterflies surrounded by trees.

"An old Mexican woman told me once that when a butterfly comes across your path, it's an ancestor coming to see you," Farrell said.

Metcalf designed a tile depicting the rolling green Ventura landscape that the New Jersey transplant said he sees each day from the campus.

The local landscape also moved student artist Melanie Hirdler, 57, of Ojai. "I did part of the inner structure. I did an impression of oak leaves," she said. "We felt like we were part of something big."

Hirdler said she and the other students felt as if they had accompanied Toth and student artist Julie Wellings when the pair traveled to Cuba in early December to deliver the mural.

Havana-bound

Due to long-standing tensions between the United States and Cuba, U.S. law prevents its citizens from sending merchandise to Cuba. So Toth, Wellings and eight other travelers hand-carried the bubble-wrapped tiles on the plane. Each tile weighed two to three pounds.

The eight accompanying Toth and Wellings included five other Ojai artists and two additional artist friends from the Pacific Northwest.

Culture shock struck just after the group landed in Havana. As the 10 were going through customs with their tiles, government officials detained Wellings, 65, of Ojai. "I was taken off by myself and asked how much money I brought, what religion I was, what I was there for ," Wellings said.

Toth explained that government officials arbitrarily snag someone and question him or her so that Cuban society feels the constant pressure from the government.

"There is this great, joyful life expressed by the Cuban people," Wellings said. "But under that is this great sadness and stress."

Families get 51 pounds of rice per month and 10 eggs every two weeks. The only way they can get meat or milk is through the black market, which could land them in jail for the rest of their lives, Toth said.

Art rising from decay

The effect of the Castro regime is evident in the architecture, too, Toth and Wellings agreed. The buildings are mostly Spanish colonial, an echo of a time when Cuba was at its most robust. Each home is behind a wall, and many of the walls are covered with murals. Neglect has nibbled away at the graceful architecture, she said.

"Castro went into power 50 years ago, and there have been no improvements or anything," Toth said. "In poorer parts of Havana, some houses don't even have roofs. It feels like the murals are holding up the place."

Toth was cheered to see art rising up from the decay. People had fashioned murals from trash. Inside the village of Jaimanitas, Fuster's home was a bounty of creativity.

"It was covered in murals. It was extreme, exuberant, radical," Toth said.

Fuster had arranged construction of an undulating wall curving into the village. It was there that the mural from San Buenaventura would find its home.

As the group of American artists ate lunch one day, Fuster had workers toil away with mortar until the tree of friendship was standing upright on the wall, the first installation of the public art project.

"It's awe-inspiring," Farrell said. "It still gives me goose bumps."

The mural project went so well, the students have decided to launch another team effort. If they get the OK from college officials, they will create a mural 10 feet high by 13 inches wide for display on campus. The theme, they say, will be the four elements: earth, air, water and fire.

The students who hope to add some beauty to the Ventura College campus realize that they have created history on a sunny island thousands of miles away.

"A piece of each of us artists is in Cuba," Metcalf said.