The Vecino-a-Vecino project was a CDC funded project in collaboration with Blue Sky Center and the Santa Barbara County Department of Health. New Cuyama, a rural town of about 550 residents, sits in the high desert on the edges of Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo, and Kern Counties. After a particularly difficult wave of the Covid-19 pandemic, Blue Sky Center (a cultural center in New Cuyama geared toward economic and cultural development in this rural area) was awarded a grant to complete a community-wide art project to bring people together and hopefully increase vaccine confidence. The resulting projects were Superbloom: a PlaceBase production community theater project, and a zine education series with a culminating community-wide zine mailed to every resident.

I was chosen as the visiting artist to complete the zine portion of the project. I developed a curriculum for zine classes that I taught afterschool to elementary, middle, and high school students. I had each group of students create their own personalized zines about community, being a good neighbor, how we show others that we care for them, and the uniqueness of the New Cuyama valley. I then made copies of the individual zines for the students to give to their family and friends, while scanning images that then went into a community wide zine. The community zine, which was also bilingual for the large portion of Spanish speakers that live in the area, was distributed to every member of the town through the mail. I titled the zine “What Makes Cuyama Bloom” to highlight what makes their home so special.