Sandra, scene six, take one, roll two.
You talked about how the murals brighten the community and beautify the community.
Can you tell us about that a little? I feel that they do do this.
Just start again, say the murals this time.
We're not going to use my question, so you have to get the word murals in there.
You have to answer.
I pretend that you didn't say a thing? Yeah, pretend I didn't say anything, because we're not going to hear me.
Okay, ask that question again.
About how the murals brighten the community and beautify the community.
Our murals do brighten the community, because whenever I was walking down the street and I would see a mural, it was a happy sight.
For other communities, like when I would walk down Archer Avenue, I really don't see any murals down there.
I see nothing, as a matter of fact.
You just walk down the street, it's not as exciting as when you walk down 26th Street, for example, which is where I live.
When you look around you, there's murals everywhere.
They're just always brightening up the community.
I felt that when gang members would always write their graffiti on the walls, if you would put a mural on that certain wall, you would paint over it, they would respect it.
There would be the sudden respect for the mural and the sudden respect for the artists who painted it.
They wouldn't touch it, they'd back away.
Maybe they'd go to another wall, but if you were to paint another mural there, they'd back away too.
It would just make everyone a lot more looking at it.
I would feel that it brightens things up.
That's what I felt.
I felt that people would look at it and suddenly be happy.
That's how I felt, at least.
I think it would brighten up the community.
You talked before about your Puerto Rican heritage and wanting to include that in your art.
What is it about Puerto Rico, that heritage that you want to communicate or you feel close to? I think just the strength of it.
I would say the strength of being Puerto Rican.
I would say to let people know that we're fighting or let people know what's happening right now and just show them my opinion in just an artistic way.
That's what I would really want to focus.
The only problem is I have to know more about it.
I'd like to go down there to travel in Puerto Rico and look at their mural paintings.
Just look at the sites.
It's so beautiful.
You can draw beautiful landscaping.
I need to know more about it.
That's what I felt.
My artwork should have more of Puerto Rico involved inside of it.
What is your personal ambition when you look to the future as an artist and as a muralist? What do you want to accomplish? What I've always wanted to accomplish was to be known already by the age of 26 or 27.
To be known, to be asked from different countries.
They call me just to go over there and paint or make a workshop.
That's what I've always wanted, to have my name in books published or to exhibit in museums that only the best artists exhibit in.
I would want that.
I would want children to look up to me.
I would want them to look at me and actually want to be with me or actually want to paint like me.
For me to be such a big influence that suddenly I'd stop like when I'm really against gangs.
Maybe I'd make a big influence on that.
I just want to really be set somewhere financially for one and just have people know me.
I just want to be known.
That's what I want to do in the future, hopefully.
If you could paint any mural, any place, pick any place and paint any mural, where would it be and what would you paint? Where would it be? I don't know exactly where it would be.
I've always wanted to go to Africa to paint.
But probably I take some of Africa's ideas and bring them in.
It's something about it.
I think maybe I see in Chicago because I think that it's not that great.
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.
Maybe New York because New York is a place where I think they would need a little bit of...
What's the word I'm looking for? Maybe they need someone to help them out or something.
Maybe I would do it against abortion or something or against incest or something that I'm really against.
I just draw little things like that.
I paint a big mural and that's what I would have to do about it.
Sandra, scene one, take one, roll two.
Lead into the Curie mural.
When we first started the Curie mural, which was last year, it was in the summer of last year.
It was a new idea that my teacher, Ms.
Matthews, had come up with.
She wanted to paint a mural to hang up and let it have to do with the youth, what the youth does right now.
We had flood a little bit and she wasn't sure what she was.
Do that again and get into it faster.
Like last summer we...
Okay, let's do Curie again.
That's what we were doing.
Last summer we worked on a mural at Curie and we've been working on it for a while.
It has to do with the youth, what the youth does, maybe dancing or maybe listening to music.
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.
Just simple things that we do in our everyday life, going to school or driver's ed, etc.
That's what we had just led into at Curie.
Okay, could you do the same thing with Cooper? How did you get into that and lead us into the Cooper mural? At Cooper, during the summer of last year again, the principal wanted a huge mural just to put in the office.
So I started thinking of a different idea, something having to do with Paris.
I just started working on it over the summer, last summer.
It was pretty successful.
It was a nice mural that had to do with Paris and it was acrylic.
It was a nice mural.
Do you want more on that? I think what we should do, she shouldn't say something else.
Sandra Sineck, take one, roll two.
Tell us about Cooper.
Jose Clemente Roscoe, we decided to paint a mural.
Dr.
Michael has asked me to paint one.
A mural 5 by 11 feet and I decided to do something having to do with Paris.
It was a very successful mural.
It was beautiful.
I thought it was a great mural and it cheered the place up.
It was great.
That's short enough.
At Curie High School, Ms.
Matthews wanted us to paint a mural to put up so all the students could see it.
She wanted it to involve the youth.
So we all got together and we started thinking of things like guys or girls going to dance parties, a lot of pregnancies, a lot of drug abuse, or just gang related or drinking.
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.
But it's just part of what it was.
That was just part of the youth.
That's part of us.
And that's what we wanted to draw.
That's what we just decided to paint.
Is that better? I think that's better.
Sandra, scene 9, take 1, roll 2.
You talked about how your artwork has changed.
Sandra, scene 10, take 1, roll 2.
Did you hear that clap? Could you tell us about the change in the way people treat with school because you're an artist? At school now they treat me with a lot of respect.
They treat me more like an artist.
They see my artwork, it's been growing, it's grown, it's changed and they see that.
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.
So I think now they're treating me with a lot more difference, a lot more respect.
I think I did deserve that because I tried hard and they noticed that.
Could you talk a little bit about your desire to help people through your art? I've always wanted to help people through my art.
That was something that I've always wanted to do.
I needed someone to help me.
No one really was there for me.
And different artists that I would look at, different artists that I admired, their artwork would help me a lot.
So I think that's what I've always wanted to do.
I want to help someone just like they helped me.
They didn't really know they were helping me, but they did and hopefully I can do the same.
Could you talk a little bit about what you see as the importance of art in the community? Is it important? Yeah, I think it is important.
If there wasn't any art, see art to me, it lets people know what's happening in the community.
It lets people know how the community is doing, if it's doing well or if people aren't...
the politics or things like that.
That's what I felt they did.
And I feel that if there weren't murals or if there was an art, people wouldn't exactly know what was going on.
What was going on in a person's head or things like that.
Somehow I think it brightens it up and it just helps everyone.
I don't know exactly what it is though.
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.
It changes people's perspective and it changes just their thoughts of the community.
Finally, I wanted to ask you about yourself reflecting in the mural.
You said before that you wanted people to look at the murals and say, know something about you.
As in murals, as in my own artwork, I want a person, the viewer, to know who I am.
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.
Or feel the thought that I'm thinking and feel just exactly what I'm feeling.
And it's always been important to me to let the viewer know what was going on in my mind and in my heart.
And just what was just going on in my life.
I've always wanted to do that with murals and that's why I'm starting to get more involved in it.
Because I want people to know exactly how I feel and I want them to feel it with me.
If I'm tense or if I'm upset, I want them to feel that way.
If I'm happy, let them feel happy.
That's just a part of me and that's what I wanted to share with people.
