WEBVTT

1
00:00:07.540 --> 00:00:09.180
Sanda interview, date?

2
00:00:10.700 --> 00:00:13.140
Scene one, take one, roll one.

3
00:00:16.420 --> 00:00:19.620
Okay Sanda, if you can go ahead and tell us a little bit about your art.

4
00:00:20.880 --> 00:00:24.800
Well basically my artwork has a lot of pain in it.

5
00:00:24.800 --> 00:00:34.560
It influences pain a lot because I realized when I was younger I would always have a lot of things in my life that would get in my way or I'd have a lot of problems I'd go through a lot.

6
00:00:35.140 --> 00:00:45.920
So my artwork has a lot of that influence in it and for example I have a lot of hand gestures in my drawings emphasizing strength or growing or power.

7
00:00:47.280 --> 00:00:59.700
And in the eyes, when you draw in the eyes, when I usually paint the eyes have an intense feeling or the expression on the face is, when people look at it they can tell that there's something wrong with it, that there's pain inside of it.

8
00:01:00.020 --> 00:01:01.480
That's mostly what I work with.

9
00:01:04.960 --> 00:01:07.060
Hello people, how's that?

10
00:01:07.560 --> 00:01:11.300
Okay, Sanda, scene two, take one, roll one.

11
00:01:11.940 --> 00:01:20.340
Okay Sanda, if you could tell us, tell us about how you first noticed the murals and how they changed.

12
00:01:22.000 --> 00:01:26.900
Well I've always lived around 18th Street and 18th Street, that's where I see most of the murals.

13
00:01:27.440 --> 00:01:31.620
So when I used to live in the north side, no murals, I would barely see anything.

14
00:01:32.120 --> 00:01:35.740
When I started to move to 18th Street I started noticing murals and seeing what they were about.

15
00:01:36.200 --> 00:01:39.440
Except I didn't know why they had so much pain inside of them.

16
00:01:39.440 --> 00:01:49.900
I noticed that a lot of the murals it was like struggling, people struggling, people fighting, swords or poor people holding babies, things like that.

17
00:01:50.060 --> 00:01:52.520
I always wondered why it was like that.

18
00:01:53.040 --> 00:01:57.300
Now, that was before, that was like six, seven years ago.

19
00:01:57.600 --> 00:01:59.600
Now I notice that the murals aren't like that as much.

20
00:01:59.660 --> 00:02:05.800
Now the murals are more happier or more simple or businessmen with suits or you know, that's the kind of things that I see now.

21
00:02:06.140 --> 00:02:07.840
I don't see as much struggle.

22
00:02:07.840 --> 00:02:11.720
It seems like if things are getting better that's what the community seems like.

23
00:02:13.680 --> 00:02:20.140
When I first started painting murals it was hard for me because I was always used to painting in the small area.

24
00:02:20.840 --> 00:02:22.860
I was afraid of drawing on a mural.

25
00:02:23.160 --> 00:02:29.260
I was always afraid to pick up my pencil or my paintbrush and draw big.

26
00:02:29.300 --> 00:02:30.860
I always thought that it was going to come out wrong.

27
00:02:31.260 --> 00:02:35.280
But when you do it you realize that you draw the person inside of your mural.

28
00:02:35.280 --> 00:02:38.740
You make them look at it and want to walk inside and join you.

29
00:02:39.220 --> 00:02:42.980
And that's part of why I like it so much, just the fact that I can work large.

30
00:02:43.460 --> 00:02:48.080
I can show people more expressiveness, more things about myself or about the mural itself.

31
00:02:48.620 --> 00:02:52.240
And you just draw people inside and that's basically what I like about it the most.

32
00:02:53.460 --> 00:02:55.660
How did you feel the first time you painted a mural?

33
00:02:56.460 --> 00:02:58.200
The first time I was so scared.

34
00:02:58.580 --> 00:03:01.820
I just, I was used to painting with oils that used to be part of me.

35
00:03:02.280 --> 00:03:04.160
And I started painting with acrylics.

36
00:03:04.160 --> 00:03:07.540
I thought it would be much harder with acrylics.

37
00:03:07.700 --> 00:03:10.000
The fact that the mural was so large, it scared me.

38
00:03:10.000 --> 00:03:12.400
It made me pull away from it and I didn't want to.

39
00:03:12.660 --> 00:03:16.400
So I was timid with it and I didn't want to paint.

40
00:03:16.560 --> 00:03:19.260
I was telling my teacher I didn't want to do it.

41
00:03:19.760 --> 00:03:23.500
But once I started to do it I got this sudden confidence inside of me.

42
00:03:23.600 --> 00:03:25.820
Just the fact that it was coming out beautiful.

43
00:03:25.940 --> 00:03:27.360
So much attention, you know.

44
00:03:27.680 --> 00:03:28.960
It was a big difference.

45
00:03:29.280 --> 00:03:31.000
I was scared but now I like it a lot.

46
00:03:31.680 --> 00:03:32.120
Okay.

47
00:03:34.240 --> 00:03:37.660
So you want me to wait until you tell me to ask a question?

48
00:03:38.700 --> 00:03:38.700


49
00:03:38.760 --> 00:03:38.760


50
00:03:39.440 --> 00:03:39.740
Uh, snake.

51
00:03:40.780 --> 00:03:43.440
Sandra, scene three, take one, roll one.

52
00:03:45.480 --> 00:03:50.160
If you could tell us about the messages in your murals and why those messages you've chosen.

53
00:03:51.940 --> 00:03:55.880
Well one thing with me was I grew up in a neighborhood where there were lots of gangs.

54
00:03:56.440 --> 00:03:58.120
And that was a big influence on me.

55
00:03:58.120 --> 00:04:05.920
My artwork when I was in eighth grade, seventh grade, had to do with boys smoking or guys in gangs with tattoos and everything else.

56
00:04:06.100 --> 00:04:08.340
And I didn't realize that it was a negative influence.

57
00:04:08.800 --> 00:04:10.200
I thought wow, this is great.

58
00:04:10.360 --> 00:04:11.600
You know, my brother's in gangs.

59
00:04:12.040 --> 00:04:13.200
All my friends are in gangs.

60
00:04:13.240 --> 00:04:14.260
So I just draw about it.

61
00:04:14.660 --> 00:04:20.060
Well it turns out that the more I realized that gangs were just a ruining thing,

62
00:04:20.080 --> 00:04:25.560
that they were beating up on people or beating up my brother or threatening my life, threatening my family's life,

63
00:04:26.020 --> 00:04:28.600
I started to put my artwork against gangs.

64
00:04:28.780 --> 00:04:30.140
I started to change my artwork completely.

65
00:04:30.220 --> 00:04:32.240
It was like a sudden change.

66
00:04:32.280 --> 00:04:33.460
It just popped out of nowhere.

67
00:04:34.120 --> 00:04:42.360
My artwork started to say, you know, get out of gangs or just, well this was really cartoon-like things.

68
00:04:43.540 --> 00:04:45.600
And my friends started getting pregnant.

69
00:04:46.840 --> 00:04:48.180
Half of my friends got pregnant.

70
00:04:48.180 --> 00:04:55.480
So my artwork just was saying, you know, just let's cool down on this and realize what life's more about.

71
00:04:55.840 --> 00:05:03.700
So I would do things against, what do you call it, against incest, against child abuse, against everything.

72
00:05:04.180 --> 00:05:09.700
So I guess what was turning out was I was realizing more that not to hang around with that kind of a group

73
00:05:09.700 --> 00:05:13.760
and notice that your friends are like this, your peers are like this, and maybe you don't want them to be that way

74
00:05:13.760 --> 00:05:16.320
and just try to talk to people to get away from it.

75
00:05:16.320 --> 00:05:18.040
That's what mostly Mariqua was about.

76
00:05:18.740 --> 00:05:20.520
That's what I mostly influenced on.

77
00:05:21.100 --> 00:05:26.380
And can you describe how the murals affect people, the messages?

78
00:05:27.200 --> 00:05:30.300
Yeah, because I didn't think that they affected people that much.

79
00:05:30.800 --> 00:05:37.140
I thought they would just look at it, oh that's nice, that's interesting, you know, until I worked at José Clemente Orozco.

80
00:05:37.580 --> 00:05:45.040
I worked on a large mural, I think it was five by eleven, and it was just a nice scene, sort of from Paris.

81
00:05:45.040 --> 00:05:47.020
It was taken from Paris.

82
00:05:48.980 --> 00:05:53.860
And the thing about the mural was I didn't think it would make that much of a difference on people because of how calm it was.

83
00:05:54.200 --> 00:05:57.860
But when I went to the office a few weeks later, people were more calm, more happy, more cheerful.

84
00:05:58.160 --> 00:05:59.380
At least that's what I had noticed.

85
00:05:59.680 --> 00:06:07.980
And if I look at a mural in the street and if I see how it has something to do with against gangs or against homosexuals or whatever,

86
00:06:08.400 --> 00:06:11.460
anything that it has to do with, it does influence me just by looking at it.

87
00:06:11.460 --> 00:06:13.800
It makes me think, and I'm sure it makes other people think.

88
00:06:13.800 --> 00:06:16.200
I'm pretty sure it does.

89
00:06:20.260 --> 00:06:24.880
Is there actually five of them?

90
00:06:25.320 --> 00:06:26.100
I don't know, I'll change it.

91
00:06:26.760 --> 00:06:26.760


92
00:06:27.060 --> 00:06:30.440
Sandra, scene four, take one, roll one.

93
00:06:31.660 --> 00:06:32.380
Okay, any time.

94
00:06:32.540 --> 00:06:35.620
And, okay, starting with your favorite things in murals.

95
00:06:36.740 --> 00:06:44.480
The thing about murals that attracted me, or the certain murals that would attract me the most were the type that had a lot of activity in them,

96
00:06:44.480 --> 00:06:52.120
that had lots of people inside of it moving like crazies or holding up flags and just that they were pretty active.

97
00:06:52.180 --> 00:06:54.140
Those are the kind that would attract me.

98
00:06:54.580 --> 00:07:00.320
To me they had earth tone colors and the colors were kind of bright in a way, something about them.

99
00:07:00.860 --> 00:07:05.660
And those are the type of murals that would always catch my attention and make me stare at them for a long time.

100
00:07:06.260 --> 00:07:11.440
And when I would go to the north side a lot, I would see a lot of murals with the greens, earth tone colors.

101
00:07:11.440 --> 00:07:14.240
So that would remind me a lot about Puerto Rico.

102
00:07:16.040 --> 00:07:17.380
I want to learn more about Puerto Rico.

103
00:07:17.480 --> 00:07:18.900
I want to paint more about it.

104
00:07:18.940 --> 00:07:22.280
I want to paint more about my country, about my people.

105
00:07:22.800 --> 00:07:27.660
And it was hard because I was raised in a background of Puerto Rico.

106
00:07:28.340 --> 00:07:37.500
So what I'm trying to do a lot with my artwork now is, well, I'm trying to gather as much information as I could to know more about it and to, in my artwork, to express it.

107
00:07:37.500 --> 00:07:45.220
And maybe one day I'll be exhibiting things about Puerto Rico on the north side or, because right now I'm exhibiting a lot around here in the Pilsen area.

108
00:07:45.660 --> 00:07:49.340
And I'd like to go different places. I'd like to exhibit in Puerto Rico.

109
00:07:49.400 --> 00:07:51.400
But I wanted to do with my country.

110
00:07:53.780 --> 00:07:57.060
That's all I could come up with. I just suddenly forgot everything.

111
00:07:59.920 --> 00:08:02.540
Sandra, scene five, take one, roll one.

112
00:08:03.940 --> 00:08:09.860
So begin with the art versus the message and how you balance that in your own work.

113
00:08:10.720 --> 00:08:14.400
Well, basically, I normally work with my technique the most.

114
00:08:14.620 --> 00:08:16.880
That's what I, I think that's what I study the most.

115
00:08:17.180 --> 00:08:23.540
When I work with technique, I feel that the person, it attracts their attention more than the subject itself.

116
00:08:24.000 --> 00:08:27.420
So that's really important to me, the technique that I use.

117
00:08:27.560 --> 00:08:28.980
Of course, the subject too.

118
00:08:28.980 --> 00:08:35.460
But I just like it. I just like the feel of the pencil or the paintbrush, just the strokes.

119
00:08:35.560 --> 00:08:38.600
I love strokes a lot. And that's what my artwork is mostly about.

120
00:08:38.760 --> 00:08:49.540
If I use a person inside of it or if I use an object, I'll try to make it as, even if it's a dull object, I'll try to make it as powerful as I could by my technique or things like that.

121
00:08:51.220 --> 00:08:54.360
What kind of feedback do you get? Criticism, compliments?

122
00:08:54.660 --> 00:08:55.740
Oh, I get a lot of that.

123
00:08:55.740 --> 00:08:59.320
I get compliments, but then again I get the negative parts.

124
00:08:59.680 --> 00:09:06.800
And it used to hurt me a lot. I used to just lock myself up in my room or just think about it, jeez, I wish they wouldn't have told me that way, you know.

125
00:09:07.280 --> 00:09:18.040
Maybe I did something wrong or maybe they don't like my technique or they'd say that it was too scary or it was too, my mom especially would get scared of my artwork because sometimes I draw evil things.

126
00:09:18.420 --> 00:09:21.880
It was just the mood I was in. It wasn't because I had this evil person inside of me.

127
00:09:22.980 --> 00:09:29.240
But I'd like it and I'd like all my artwork and people would just come and say, well no, you should just, you should change that Sandra.

128
00:09:29.280 --> 00:09:33.680
And I just, I didn't like people telling me that doesn't look right or things like that.

129
00:09:33.700 --> 00:09:42.300
But from that I learned, now I can take that criticism constructively and I can just, I can, from what they say, I can paint something even better, you know.

130
00:09:42.360 --> 00:09:51.300
It's up to what they say. I let myself go with other people, what they think of my drawings, and that's what's going to hopefully help me in the future.

131
00:09:51.300 --> 00:09:56.300
Before it used to hurt me a lot though and now, now I think I can handle it.

132
00:09:57.540 --> 00:10:08.100
The pain and the evil that you say comes out in your artwork, where do you think that comes from? Is it influenced by the community or are you angry?

133
00:10:09.520 --> 00:10:19.300
Oh, yeah, I think that's what you would say. I think it's a mixture of both the community and what I went through as a younger person or when I was younger.

134
00:10:19.300 --> 00:10:26.600
What would happen was in my community it was so bad, I didn't like it. It was, I'd walk around and there were just gangs fighting with each other.

135
00:10:26.620 --> 00:10:32.420
I'd walk with my mom and gangs just fighting or with knives and just screaming out all these gang symbols.

136
00:10:32.780 --> 00:10:38.380
So what I would do is just, I'd stay at home. I wouldn't like to go out. If I'd go out I'd just play some sports or something.

137
00:10:38.880 --> 00:10:46.340
But it came to a point where I was threatened by a guy with a knife. He threatened me because I was my brother's sister and he was in a gang.

138
00:10:46.340 --> 00:10:54.280
And it just, it was getting out of hand. My brother's best friend got shot and he just fell on the floor and was just bleeding, whatever.

139
00:10:54.280 --> 00:11:00.180
He died. And it was a lot of anger in me and I just wanted to get it all over with.

140
00:11:00.300 --> 00:11:04.540
So at that point that's when I started creating all these, the paintings that started getting more evil.