Corrales mural project lets students help tell village history

Corrales is putting its history on a wall, and children will help make it happen. A new community mosaic planned for La Entrada Park will be built around the village’s past, present and future, with students in grades four through eight creating clay pieces in art class from October through December and adults and artists filling in the glass background.

Maggie Robinson, a former Rio Rancho teacher and Corrales resident, is leading the Corrales Community Mural effort. The finished work is expected to cover about 80 square feet and to be completed in mid-2027. Robinson said the mural’s three sections will each represent roughly one-third of the piece, giving equal weight to where Corrales came from, what it is now and what it may become.

The project is intended to teach local history from a Corrales point of view, with themes that include animal husbandry, bosque preservation and other pieces of the village’s identity. That approach is central to the mural’s design: instead of a generic landscape or decorative scene, the artwork is meant to reflect the everyday forces that shaped the community and still define it. Robinson has worked on community mosaics before, including projects she helped build while teaching in Rio Rancho, and she is bringing that hands-on model back to the village.

The mural will be installed on a steel frame that wraps around a corner of the playground, making the piece visible in a busy public space where children and families already gather. The materials and tools alone are budgeted at $8,408, while the labor will come from volunteers and students. That mix of funding and sweat equity makes the project as much a civic exercise as an art installation.

Support has already spread across a wide circle of Corrales and regional organizations, including the Corrales Arts Center, Corrales Horse and Mule People, the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District, the New Mexico Natural History Museum, Wild Birds Unlimited, Raices, Santa Ana Pueblo, the Indian Cultural Pueblo Center, the Corrales Society of Artists and the Corrales Farmers’ Cooperative, along with other residents. Village leaders are also weighing the practical side of the project: Councilor Stuart Murray raised questions about lighting, cleaning and whether the mosaic could be protected from graffiti, a reminder that the piece is being planned not only as a celebration of memory but as a public object that will have to last.