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Sandra, scene six, take one, roll two.

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You talked about how the murals brighten the community and beautify the community.

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Can you tell us about that a little?

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I feel that they do do this.

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Just start again, say the murals this time.

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We're not going to use my question, so you have to get the word murals in there.

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You have to answer.

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I pretend that you didn't say a thing?

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Yeah, pretend I didn't say anything, because we're not going to hear me.

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Okay, ask that question again.

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About how the murals brighten the community and beautify the community.

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Our murals do brighten the community, because whenever I was walking down the street

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and I would see a mural, it was a happy sight.

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For other communities, like when I would walk down Archer Avenue,

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I really don't see any murals down there.

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I see nothing, as a matter of fact.

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You just walk down the street, it's not as exciting as when you walk down 26th Street, for example,

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which is where I live.

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When you look around you, there's murals everywhere.

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They're just always brightening up the community.

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I felt that when gang members would always write their graffiti on the walls,

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if you would put a mural on that certain wall, you would paint over it,

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they would respect it.

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There would be the sudden respect for the mural and the sudden respect for the artists who painted it.

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They wouldn't touch it, they'd back away.

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Maybe they'd go to another wall, but if you were to paint another mural there, they'd back away too.

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It would just make everyone a lot more looking at it.

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I would feel that it brightens things up.

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That's what I felt.

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I felt that people would look at it and suddenly be happy.

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That's how I felt, at least.

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I think it would brighten up the community.

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You talked before about your Puerto Rican heritage and wanting to include that in your art.

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What is it about Puerto Rico, that heritage that you want to communicate or you feel close to?

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I think just the strength of it.

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I would say the strength of being Puerto Rican.

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I would say to let people know that we're fighting or let people know what's happening right now

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and just show them my opinion in just an artistic way.

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That's what I would really want to focus.

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The only problem is I have to know more about it.

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I'd like to go down there to travel in Puerto Rico and look at their mural paintings.

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Just look at the sites.

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It's so beautiful.

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You can draw beautiful landscaping.

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I need to know more about it.

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That's what I felt.

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My artwork should have more of Puerto Rico involved inside of it.

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What is your personal ambition when you look to the future as an artist and as a muralist?

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What do you want to accomplish?

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What I've always wanted to accomplish was to be known already by the age of 26 or 27.

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To be known, to be asked from different countries.

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They call me just to go over there and paint or make a workshop.

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That's what I've always wanted, to have my name in books published

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or to exhibit in museums that only the best artists exhibit in.

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I would want that.

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I would want children to look up to me.

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I would want them to look at me and actually want to be with me or actually want to paint like me.

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For me to be such a big influence that suddenly I'd stop like when I'm really against gangs.

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Maybe I'd make a big influence on that.

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I just want to really be set somewhere financially for one and just have people know me.

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I just want to be known.

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That's what I want to do in the future, hopefully.

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If you could paint any mural, any place, pick any place and paint any mural, where would it be and what would you paint?

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Where would it be?

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I don't know exactly where it would be.

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I've always wanted to go to Africa to paint.

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But probably I take some of Africa's ideas and bring them in.

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It's something about it.

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I think maybe I see in Chicago because I think that it's not that great.

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It's just a fabulous city, but some parts of it is not that great when the gangs are around or when the people are around.

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Maybe New York because New York is a place where I think they would need a little bit of...

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What's the word I'm looking for?

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Maybe they need someone to help them out or something.

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Maybe I would do it against abortion or something or against incest or something that I'm really against.

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I just draw little things like that.

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I paint a big mural and that's what I would have to do about it.

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Sandra, scene one, take one, roll two.

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Lead into the Curie mural.

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When we first started the Curie mural, which was last year, it was in the summer of last year.

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It was a new idea that my teacher, Ms. Matthews, had come up with.

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She wanted to paint a mural to hang up and let it have to do with the youth, what the youth does right now.

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We had flood a little bit and she wasn't sure what she was.

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Do that again and get into it faster.

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Like last summer we...

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Okay, let's do Curie again.

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That's what we were doing.

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Last summer we worked on a mural at Curie and we've been working on it for a while.

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It has to do with the youth, what the youth does, maybe dancing or maybe listening to music.

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The teacher had just asked us to do something with that and we just came up with drawing things about going to parties or eating at McDonald's.

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Just simple things that we do in our everyday life, going to school or driver's ed, etc.

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That's what we had just led into at Curie.

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Okay, could you do the same thing with Cooper?

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How did you get into that and lead us into the Cooper mural?

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At Cooper, during the summer of last year again, the principal wanted a huge mural just to put in the office.

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So I started thinking of a different idea, something having to do with Paris.

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I just started working on it over the summer, last summer.

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It was pretty successful.

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It was a nice mural that had to do with Paris and it was acrylic.

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It was a nice mural.

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Do you want more on that?

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I think what we should do, she shouldn't say something else.

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Sandra Sineck, take one, roll two.

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Tell us about Cooper.

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Jose Clemente Roscoe, we decided to paint a mural.

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Dr. Michael has asked me to paint one.

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A mural 5 by 11 feet and I decided to do something having to do with Paris.

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It was a very successful mural.

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It was beautiful.

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I thought it was a great mural and it cheered the place up.

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It was great.

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That's short enough.

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At Curie High School, Ms. Matthews wanted us to paint a mural to put up so all the students could see it.

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She wanted it to involve the youth.

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So we all got together and we started thinking of things like guys or girls going to dance parties,

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a lot of pregnancies, a lot of drug abuse, or just gang related or drinking.

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It was in a way, it was a good mural but then people started asking questions about it and asking why we had done it that way or why we kept including negative things.

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But it's just part of what it was.

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That was just part of the youth.

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That's part of us.

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And that's what we wanted to draw.

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That's what we just decided to paint.

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Is that better?

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I think that's better.

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Sandra, scene 9, take 1, roll 2.

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You talked about how your artwork has changed.

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Sandra, scene 10, take 1, roll 2.

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Did you hear that clap?

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Could you tell us about the change in the way people treat with school because you're an artist?

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At school now they treat me with a lot of respect.

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They treat me more like an artist.

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They see my artwork, it's been growing, it's grown, it's changed and they see that.

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So now they treat me more like, they look up to me sometimes and they say, well, gee, she's really trying hard, she's really making it.

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So I think now they're treating me with a lot more difference, a lot more respect.

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I think I did deserve that because I tried hard and they noticed that.

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Could you talk a little bit about your desire to help people through your art?

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I've always wanted to help people through my art.

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That was something that I've always wanted to do.

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I needed someone to help me.

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No one really was there for me.

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And different artists that I would look at, different artists that I admired, their artwork would help me a lot.

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So I think that's what I've always wanted to do.

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I want to help someone just like they helped me.

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They didn't really know they were helping me, but they did and hopefully I can do the same.

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Could you talk a little bit about what you see as the importance of art in the community?

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Is it important?

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Yeah, I think it is important.

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If there wasn't any art, see art to me, it lets people know what's happening in the community.

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It lets people know how the community is doing, if it's doing well or if people aren't...

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the politics or things like that.

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That's what I felt they did.

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And I feel that if there weren't murals or if there was an art, people wouldn't exactly know what was going on.

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What was going on in a person's head or things like that.

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Somehow I think it brightens it up and it just helps everyone.

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I don't know exactly what it is though.

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I don't know what it is just when I look at a mural and I think that when people look at it, it does change things.

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It changes people's perspective and it changes just their thoughts of the community.

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Finally, I wanted to ask you about yourself reflecting in the mural.

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You said before that you wanted people to look at the murals and say, know something about you.

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As in murals, as in my own artwork, I want a person, the viewer, to know who I am.

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I want the person to want to go inside the mural, walk inside, just feel it and feel the energy that I want to portray.

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Or feel the thought that I'm thinking and feel just exactly what I'm feeling.

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And it's always been important to me to let the viewer know what was going on in my mind and in my heart.

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And just what was just going on in my life.

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I've always wanted to do that with murals and that's why I'm starting to get more involved in it.

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Because I want people to know exactly how I feel and I want them to feel it with me.

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If I'm tense or if I'm upset, I want them to feel that way.

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If I'm happy, let them feel happy.

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That's just a part of me and that's what I wanted to share with people.