"Murals" Off-Cam Comments Ivan Sandra Olga

Q.

Susan and Julie mentioned that you had talked about the colors, the difference, and that Puerto Rico was so colorful and beautiful.

Can you talk a little bit about that? Something that is, I talk about it right now.

I told my wife, I work outdoors.

So that was something when I came to the colorful.

I believe that EGO 20 Caribbean country, and you see the color.

That's the first thing you see in the houses.

Here, that was something that I noticed when I came.

There was no color.

That was gray and white.

There was no other color, even in the wintertime.

The only color that you could see was from the streetlights or neon signs.

I used to tell that to some of my friends continuously, but why do people don't paint their porch blue or yellow? There was a time that I was trying to do that, but then I realized it doesn't look nice.

You were doing something that doesn't, you know.

When I first bought this house, I was painting the porch gray.

I said, what am I doing? I don't like this color.

I don't know why I'm doing it.

But I went to the hardware store trying to get a nice color for the porch.

But even the can said, porch paint, and that was gray.

That was telling me that that was the paint.

But nowadays, I don't know.

Recently, I was talking to my wife that I see they're painting those houses in color now.

You know what? I do their time that on Sundays I drive around Labue now.

And we keep our ease of eschelin just to see those Victorian houses, the color that they're putting into it.

And I was telling my wife, now that we're furnishing the house, I'm going to put a pink on that.

She said, pink? Yeah, pink.

And that's, well.

It's like I told my wife, no, we have to change.

We're not going to paint brown or gray no more.

I need to see color.

It's like if I don't see the sun, like at least once a week in the wintertime, I get depressed.

And I saw a report not long ago that happened to a lot of people.

And I told my wife, you see, I'm not crazy.

I need to see when I, I don't care if it is 50 below zero, if I see the sunlight, I don't know, my, my, my, my, I'll change the mood, the way I feel, I change.

And that was something when I came here, the colors, I noticed the color of, there you always using color, bright colors.

And you see the green, you see the, but I don't know, it's changing.

I don't know if it is unchanging or I'm getting used to do what the other people are doing.

But, you know, it's like the tourists, they go to, the tourists, they go to Hawaii and they wear those shirts.

But when they come back here, they put on the, probably they throw it away or something.

You see, you see those people, the tourists, the bright colors, but they come to the states and they throw everything out, they go back to their soup grade and, you know, it's like.

And that's something that I noticed and I always talk about it, that I enjoy having color, not something wow, where you're out of.

But those are things that we see.

Probably you, same thing happens when you go to another country.

So how did that mural come to you? I mean, how does it go from here to there? We all started brainstorming, the teacher, myself and one more student.

We were all talking about we wanted to make a mural curing because the funds were hard to get.

And we were just talking about different things.

We were talking about at first just making it on all artists, artists painting and drawing, that's all.

But she, the teacher was saying how let's do it on problems.

A lot of students don't like to face it.

A lot of them don't like to say, well that's not a big problem, but it is when you think about it.

And from there we started talking about it.

We got the whole class to draw sketches of what they think is a problem so we can get a wide variety of ideas.

So from that, I took all the ideas and I drew a big collage of it.

After that I looked at it and I would change it, cut things out.

And we did it on a bigger piece of paper.

And then we transformed it on the mural and we changed things.

I was working with this one girl on it, Maria, and we had worked on it for a while.

And when it was all over with I started to paint on it and we started working on it and building it up.

The ideas, they started looking powerful, getting really powerful.

And I have one of a man walking to the White House.

So he's on a gold road where they're all at.

And he's walking to the White House.

That's like success and it leads to graduation.

That's what I wanted to get across because while most of my friends were dropping out of high school, getting pregnant or into drugs and things, maybe they'll learn something from it.

You never know.

Hopefully other freshmen or sophomores entering high school can do it too.

Depends where it's displayed too.

I don't know.

So how is a mural different than other kinds of art? Why do you see it being different? How do I see it being different? Other kinds of art, a mural is huge.

It can be very big.

It's usually outside.

People can see it.

Everyone can see it.

If you have your own personal artwork at home, only people you know will see it.

But a mural is something anyone can look at and everyone will.

They have to stop and look at it.

It's not something you can walk right past.

And from that you learn.

You just look at it and get more interested if the artist makes it interesting.

And you start to get involved in it and look at it in different ways and you learn from it.

But I think a mural, you learn more from a mural than a regular painting anywhere else.

Why do you think there are so many murals in Hispanic neighborhoods and you just don't see them in other places? I was thinking about that the other day too.

Maybe because we're just, art is a big influence there somehow.

Maybe that's their way of interpreting it or the neighborhood needs that right now.

That's what it needs.

It needs lighting up because if you have too many gangs in one neighborhood, all you see is graffiti.

If you start painting murals, the gangs respect it.

And the whole place lightens up.

People start getting a different character or get a lot of attention for the neighborhood.

And then the neighborhood starts fixing up.

That's what I feel.

That's what I've noticed.

So I think a mural can make a big difference.

But in Little Village or the Pilsen area, they're starting to draw, paint more murals and more murals.

It's looking nice.

I think it's making a big difference in the community.

I really don't know why it's here more than someplace else.

That's what I've noticed.

But I was just thinking about that a few days ago.

I don't know why.

That's what I think.

I think it's probably because it helps a lot.

The artist starts speaking more.

They're trying to show more.

I'm not sure.

I think so.

That's something I've been real curious about because there's a lot of different neighbors in Chicago, people going through similar kinds of experiences.

But it's the Hispanic neighborhoods that there's this art on all the walls.

And there's also a tradition in South America, in Mexico, in Puerto Rico.

Have you thought about that? Where that all comes from? Is it something about that? Maybe they come from there.

I don't know.

I've thought about it.

I've thought about it.

Artists come a lot from Mexico and Puerto Rico or different places.

And they'll come here and they'll draw something from their country.

But I don't know why they do it.

I wish I did.

I guess I haven't had enough time to think about it.

But I just started thinking about it lately.

Why is it? I'll go to different areas and I'll go by Archer or something.

It's not the same.

You just don't see it.

And without it, the neighborhood doesn't look as beautiful as it looks with the mural.

That's about all that I think.

Maybe they just want to draw something having to do with the community, having to do with the people, having to do with how the people react to it.

And they just want to show something having to do about their little neighborhood.

Could be that.

How do your friends react to you painting murals? Not all of them, no.

I don't tell them.

Akiri right now is just voted class artist.

So that's a big thing.

So I guess people are starting to notice me more.

I get a lot of people coming up to me and asking me to paint them or to do a painting for them, give it to them, things like that.

And I get a lot of respect too.

A lot of people respect me being an artist.

They look up to me or a lot of jealousy too.

It's different things, different views.

I have a best friend who's an artist too.

She exhibited with me at the Mexican Fine Arts Museum.

Her name is Tina Ramirez and she's trying to be more of an artist.

And I think I had a big influence on her too.

She had a big influence on me and we both share different things.

I think she's probably the friend that understands the most what kind of an artist I am.

Because others think I'm just an artist who can paint realistic, but that's not what I picture myself as.

I picture myself as someone who can express how I feel in different ways.

Having to do with a lot of things reflect on when I was younger, how things didn't go my way.

It always helps.

She's the one that appreciates it.

She appreciates it a lot.

And she'll learn from that and I'll learn from her.

I get a lot of friends respect it.

They like it a lot.

A lot of attention goes to it right now.

I was just told by a couple friends that they saw me on Channel 19.

So I was pretty happy.

So they do look out for me.

They look out for me a lot.

And they try to help me out.

They try to help me out by buying art supplies without me knowing.

For my birthday I'll get art supplies from all my friends or things like that.

So it's pretty nice.

They went to Reunion House for I don't really know what for.

I know they invited us.

They invited Francisco Mendoza and myself, Tina Ramirez, Issel Alfaro, and Felipe.

I forgot his last name.

Araujo or something.

But they were interviewing us probably for the mural that we were working on.

And just as artists.

Because we were working on a mural at Cooper.

And some lady was just interviewing us and talking to us about how we got into art and things like that.

But I think the attention wasn't focused on us.

It was focused more on Francisco Mendoza.

So that's the difference.

So they react to it a lot.

When you were working on the mural, I'm curious, did people make comments about the subject matter? They used to.

They used to say, that pregnant girl shouldn't be there, Sandra.

It's too big.

I want you to shrink it down.

And I'll say, well, it's a problem.

People have to face it.

Or isn't that too violent? Or why do you have that drunk person? And I just tell them the mural has to do with everything.

It has to do with the youth.

That's what I'm trying to focus on, the youth.

Don't tell me you don't drink, because everyone else, they're starting to get really involved in that.

I used to get a lot of negative people, and I used to get a lot of positive people telling me, that's good, that's powerful.

So a little of both.

People talk negative, people talk positive.

So it's both of them.

Do you have muralists that you'd like to work with? And if so, what is it about them that makes you want to work with? There's a lot of muralists that I'd like to work with.

The only problem is, I'm so young, they probably wouldn't even look at me.

But I'm trying to remember his name.

See, I forget their names.

You just interviewed him.

His little beard.

Oh, Hector? Yeah, Hector.

I think his artwork is incredible.

All the colors, the perspectives.

He does great work, and I like to work with him, too.

Vince Mendoza, he wouldn't be bad, because he does a lot having to do with the Hispanic people.

And I would like to see his views on it, because I speak with him, but I've never seen him do his artwork.

Those are really, some of them I would, and some of them I wouldn't.

But those are the two that I wouldn't mind working with.

Because I've already worked with Francisco Mendoza, and he's good.

And he's always, he's the type that'll say, you do whatever you want.

And if you ask him if it's wrong, he'll say, you're the artist.

He'll give you the freedom that you want.

So I'm glad I work with him, but some other ones, I wouldn't mind.

Those are the two that I'd like to work with.

How do you see murals fitting in with your future? Hmm.

Hopefully, I'll be able to paint a lot more murals.

I'll be able to, people will ask me to paint more murals.

I'll get paid for it, or I can show an example of how the community's growing, or it's not growing, or how negative it is, or how positive it is, different things like that.

Just, if not, maybe I can go to, they'll invite me to Mexico or Puerto Rico to paint, or Paris.

I really want to be invited somewhere to paint.

I think that would be great, to paint a mural somewhere else, having to do with me, and the people will be able to say, that's Sandra, you know.

And that's what I want right now.

That's what I'm trying to work at.

Not only on murals, though, and everything else, just artwork itself.

Well, I was going to run through some questions that are based on what you talked about last time, some of the things you said were really interesting.

So, just for starters, if you could tell us about your background in Mexico, just where you're from.

Okay.

I was born in Jalisco, and the town where I grew up is Ayutla, Jalisco.

Very small town, I think the population was less than 2 ,000 at the time.

I lived there until age nine, so as far as my first impression of the world, I think that was it, which is a rural community.

Most people there were very poor and made their living through agriculture, either working in their own lots or working for others.

And I always think back at my childhood, because it was interesting.

I literally went, sort of discovered, in my lifetime, we saw electricity coming into town, road building, because it was very isolated from the rest of the bigger towns, that sort of thing.

So, also, with my parents being here, my mother and father came here, my father, to find work and establish themselves here.

And so, they would come and visit us pretty much on a yearly basis every summer.

So, it was interesting to see these, they would come in with radio, sort of things, they were interesting gadgets to us.

And it was a very kind of exciting, thrilling time for me.

I went to school there for the first three years, and the setup there was, there was girls' schools and boys' schools, and it was public school.

And it gave me a background where there was an emphasis on reading.

And we didn't have books, the first three years didn't have books, so we learned to memorize a lot, which turned out to be very useful later on.

The other thing that I remember very much about those years was when they started bringing in pictures, movies, I love movies.

And I guess maybe the cheaper movies were the ones obtained in the United States, and they had subtitles.

So, it helped me to improve my reading.

And since I knew my parents were in the United States, the United States seemed like this fantasy place that had all these exciting things, because my parents would come in with things that were exciting, and one of them was like a car, eventually.

So, I worked hard because I wanted to communicate with my family.

At that time, no telephone, so I didn't have daily contact with them.

And people don't realize, but even stamps were prohibited for people there to write.

So, maybe we would write once every month or once every two months, because literally a stamp would be a day's worth of work.

So, I think that's what made the United States for me sort of seem like a shining, golden place, because my parents were here, and I wanted to be near them.

When I came to Chicago, I didn't know that I was going to be staying.

My family was thinking about having a stay, but it was difficult, because they were renting an apartment at Alport.

I was 1829, Alport, in Chicago.

It was very small and just was impractical.

So, at that time, I have two younger brothers.

One was, I think, about 18 months, and the other one was about five.

I was nine.

We came over for the summer.

We had a lot of fun, but then my mother said, You are staying.

That was very, it was first of all a shock.

I didn't know any English, so we had to look around for a place that would accept someone that didn't know English.

It was a bigger task than my parents had anticipated.

The local schools wanted at least that I knew some basics, and since I was nine and in third grade, they didn't know how to assess what I knew to put me in an equivalent grade.

So, a very nice priest at Holy Trinity said, Well, she needs to be in school, so we'll do the best we can.

They put me in third grade, and the first few months were pretty frightening.

There was no one that spoke Spanish.

I was probably the first one there that spoke only Spanish.

There was a girl, her mother, I believe, was Mexican, so she knew a few words of Spanish.

She had been brought up to speak only English, so she kind of gave me some understanding, and since it was so vital that I communicate, I learned English quite fast.

I was mad at survival.

The other first impressions of Chicago was that it was such a contrast.

My parents felt that we should stay in the house all the time.

They were concerned about gangs, they were concerned about violence in the neighborhood.

So, for me, it was kind of an isolating experience, too, having to stay in the apartment all the time, at least our apartment building in the backyard or anything.

So, again, I was used to going hiking up the mountains on a day -to -day basis and being out, and since I was just six, helping take care of everything, going to the market to shop, so it was quite a change, to say the least.

So, let's see, the first impression wasn't very positive.

It was actually very disappointing because I had such high expectations to start with, and this was just the opposite, very isolating.

How isolating? It was not until probably high school that we had a pet as to where to go.

We would go to La Casa del Pueblo.

It was one of the first few shops that carried Mexican ingredients for cooking.

So, we would always go there and shop.

The other place that I knew was the church and the school, and I didn't go much out of the neighborhood until I went to college, to University of Illinois.

What was the...

and got other people from other towns near Ayutla to start things like soccer teams to get together, do something you felt good about, something that reminded you of home.

I guess people were very homesick.

It was just, I remember, it was just like this sense of depression, and I felt angry that nobody seemed to notice.

And so, to me and other people that I, we talked about the murals when they built the one, they painted the one that's a copy of one of the, I'm not sure if it's Izequero's or Rivera's, that was on Luma Street, which showed nuclear destruction.

And he's kind of, I always remember because it has a shape like four leaf, depicting different things, but basically talking about the destructiveness, and to me, he felt like the evil in mankind.

So, that was like someone saying that there was a problem here.

And there were, then they started painting others that showed indeed scenes of protests, of being, of being, of being, of being, of being, of being, of being, of being, of being, of being, of being, of being, of being, of being, of being, of being, of being, of being, of being, of being, of being, of being, of being, of being, of being, of being, of being, of being, of being, of being, of being, of being, of being, of being, of being, of being, of being, of being, of being, of being, of being, of being, of being, of being, of being, of being, of being, of being, of being, of being, of being, of being, of being, of being, of being, of being, of being, of being, of being, of being, of being, of being, of being, of being harassed by police or the immigration or even just the ones that are painted like Benito Juarez.

The association that we had was that he was one of the, he was one that stood for justice.

And he broke out of the, of the way that things were in Mexico, where the natives were not involved in, in, in the government at all.

So he was a, a inspiring figure.

I'd, I wanted, and I liked the ones that had depicted some kind of protest.

Again, I felt that we needed to express outrage, that the people were living in such poor conditions that they were isolated from the rest of the community, that they needed help and nobody seemed to notice or they were ignored.

And it was based, I thought, on the differences.

We didn't look and perhaps we didn't behave like other, or the majority, so therefore we were cast aside.

The, the murals were the first time, I think, that it was public.

This is how we felt.

And it's, looking at it, there's a combination of old and new in some of them.

And I'm glad that whoever painted them also painted that, because some of the first ones were mostly about Mexico or Puerto Rico or whatever, as this wonderful place.

And my parents liked those because, oh, you know, it was a picture of home.

But for our generation that was going to school, that had been living here, and that we knew there was no way that we were going to go back economically, it was impossible.

This was home.

So we wanted home to be something better.

I don't know whether it's related to, I think that part of this movement of the murals and getting more involved politically was because there was now a group of people who said, this is home and we've got to make the best of it.

Before that, it was a group of people saying, we're going to go back home as soon as we earn enough or save enough.

And so these things that were happening all at once, I think that was the signal that we're really committed now and we're going to try to improve our situation, improve our lot.

The, some of the murals that they painted, again, I think had that double message that I don't know if it was for, from an outsider's point of view, whether they saw it, but was that the most of the painting heroes is important in sort of caring that sense of you are important as a people.

But the heroes painted, the selection is also important.

And I think someone did it unconsciously.

I don't know how much of it was done consciously by the artists, but the choices were just excellent.

They were just the kind of choices the community needed.

They needed people who were not traditional.

These people who are breaking out, who had made their themselves known through breaking with the old order of things.

Benito Hart is being there, Morelos again, these were all people who protested their situation.

So the choices made as far as what they painted were just great.

And they confirmed, and I thought solidified our growing sense.

There's a problem, we've got to do something about it and they always are not going to work.

I think Casaslan, the way it was organized, the painting of those things on the outside was kind of attracting people.

The other thing that occurred like in the churches, St.

Procopius and the priest there, Father Terence, he's been there for a long time in that community.

He obtained a picture of Guadalupe and initiated then Spanish Masses.

Prior to that, the only other church that had an image of Guadalupe was the church at Halsted.

And was it Halsted in, who's it? San Francisco? I forget the name.

That's where my parents used to go.

I myself didn't go there.

It was the only church that had Spanish Mass.

So the actual being in the same place with the other people, the other members of the community, was very helpful in getting this integration, I think.

I'm sort of thinking as I'm talking about the little details that bring people together that were absent prior to the late 1960s.

We really didn't go to the same Mass.

We went to the same school, but the language was a problem.

So we started forming a way.

The first thing that these murals did, I think they sort of sparked a process.

A process which first began by being able to identify with something positive.

To me, the murals, even the ones that were badly painted, at least had someone that I knew about that looked like me, that shared history.

We had shared history.

So it gave, it affirmed a sense that I am valuable if only because I'm a human being.

That sense was not there before.

So that was the number one.

The other was, the second thing that I saw occur was that it was, it sparked my curiosity to find out more about what these murals depicted.

So it began a communication between my family and myself, between families and between classmates of the different backgrounds and cultures.

Once I felt that I was okay as a person, then I could actually reach out.

My choice of where I went to college still was, couldn't be too far away from home.

But it was University of Illinois, certainly Cosmopolitan, so many people from all different places and so many different ideas.

It was exciting.

So differences became exciting as opposed to threatening.

And it's only until now that I've lived in different communities that I can see that if that interest and curiosity had not been sparked, I wouldn't have, well, I would be living like my parents lived or like a lot of the families that I know, which is still feeling this sense of segregation.

And not sure about their own self -worth, still feeling that if they try to reach out and communicate with others that they're not going to be accepted.

Seems like there's really a lot of messages that, you know, for the uninitiated, that come out of these murals, the one today, the older ones.

What do you see as the main messages? What sort of messages are coming out of those murals? One is, you are valuable, be proud.

There's a lot of potential in you.

And there's a lot of bad things happening.

And if you can recognize them and work to solve them, you can.

That's what they say.

I think that's what people see in them, too.