{"id":282329,"date":"2019-07-24T05:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-07-24T09:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.google.com\/articles\/CAIiEFqxKOsy8pISxmeBFW3fBjIqGQgEKhAIACoHCAow3qT_CjC1tPgCMJPFnwY?oc=5"},"modified":"2026-10-13T11:46:55","modified_gmt":"2026-10-13T15:46:55","slug":"ethiopian-cultural-garden-cleveland-mosaic-spinelli","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/282329","title":{"rendered":"A mosaic of 5,000 years of Ethiopian history anchors the first African country garden in Cleveland\u2019s Cultural Gardens"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Mosaic artist Ernesto Spinelli was finishing a wall depicting 5,000 years of Ethiopian history for Cleveland\u2019s new Ethiopian Cultural Garden in July 2019, cleveland.com reported.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" height=\"780\" width=\"780\" class=\"size-large wp-image-837725\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/cleveland-cultural-gardens-2015.jpg?fit=780%2C780&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"The Cleveland Cultural Gardens, August 2015\" \/><\/figure>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><em>The Cleveland Cultural Gardens, August 2015 (Erik Drost, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0) [file photo]<\/em><\/p>\n<p>The Ethiopian garden is the first of Cleveland\u2019s more than 30 Cultural Gardens to represent a country on the African continent. The mosaic wall, on the east side of Martin Luther King Jr. Drive, is its first phase. The Cultural Gardens, a chain of gardens in the city\u2019s Rockefeller Park, honour the communities that settled in Cleveland.<\/p>\n<p>Spinelli, 70, whose mother is Ethiopian and father Italian, lived in Ethiopia until he was about 14 or 15. He spent three months making one-square-foot tiles from quarter-inch pieces in 196 colours, then three more months setting them on the wall with his assistant, David Tufts. He called the work a labour of patience, like large Renaissance paintings, \u201cone square foot at a time.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The five panels on the north-facing side begin with Lucy, the 3.2-million-year-old hominin fossil found in Ethiopia\u2019s Afar region, and ancient cave paintings, then move through the country\u2019s ancient peoples and the Christian church to the end of the imperial dynasty, closing with the Eye of the Almighty. The south side carries a single image of the sun. \u201cBut how do you put 5,000 years in a small, simple space?\u201d Spinelli asked.<\/p>\n<p>The first-phase dedication was set for August 24, 2019, with a reception afterwards at Empress Taytu, an Ethiopian restaurant on St. Clair Avenue. Ethiopia\u2019s ambassador to the United States, Fitsum Arega, was due to attend and to serve the next day as grand marshal of the One World Day Parade of Flags, with Ethiopian community members leading the parade.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Sources:<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cleveland.com\/metro\/2019\/07\/how-do-you-put-5000-years-in-a-small-simple-space-a-mosaic-of-history-grows-as-ethiopian-cultural-garden-nears-dedication.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">cleveland.com<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Mosaic artist Ernesto Spinelli was finishing a wall depicting 5,000 years of Ethiopian history for Cleveland\u2019s new Ethiopian Cultural Garden in July 2019, cleveland.com reported.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":837725,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-282329","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ethiopian-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/cleveland-cultural-gardens-2015.jpg?fit=1280%2C853&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9NivD-1brH","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282329","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/30"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=282329"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282329\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":837741,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282329\/revisions\/837741"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/837725"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=282329"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=282329"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=282329"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}