With a paint brush, Marlene Lopez traced a line of green connecting white and yellow flowers. The flowery vines she was creating represented the strings on a guitar cradled by a white-faced calavera, or skeleton.
A 14-year-old freshman at Chicago’s Benito Juarez High School, Lopez was brushing up the details of a mural commemorating the Mexican holiday Da de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead. The mural enlivens the glass windows of a Mexican restaurant along 18th Street in the Pilsen neighborhood.
Lopez is one of some 20 students who painted murals on nine business fronts in Pilsen as part of the Yollocalli Youth Museum project of the Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum.
“Not everybody knows about Da de los Muertos,” said Lopez, stepping back from the mural to check on her work. “This is a way for us to learn about it and how it is celebrated in Mexico.”
Day of the Dead is not as widely celebrated in the Mexican and Mexican-American communities in the U.S. as it is in Mexico. Some of the traditions are lost from one generation to the next as immigrants assimilate.
But through local arts programs such as the one Lopez joined, artists and cultural institutions are playing a vital role in preserving traditions that otherwise might not have crossed the border.
“On this side of the border it has definitely been the cultural institutions and the community institutions that have brought over the tradition,” said Cesareo Moreno, visual arts director and curator of the 11th annual Day of the Dead exhibit at the museum. The exhibit includes traditional ofrendas- large-scale installations of offerings for the dead- as well as paintings, sculpture and photography.
The first group of artists to openly celebrate Day of the Dead in the United States worked with the late Sister Karen Boccalero in East Los Angeles. In 1972, the Franciscan nun organized the first Day of the Dead exhibit in the U.S. at Self-Help Graphics, a community arts center in East Los Angeles.
“Since then, the Mexicano artists community has picked up the ball and run with it,” Moreno said.
Day of the Dead, actually a two-day holiday celebrated Nov. 1 and Nov. 2 in Mexico and parts of Central America, is a religious tradition that dates back to pre-Columbian times.
“Before the Spaniards came there was a whole month dedicated to the dead,” said Moreno, explaining that indigenous cultures viewed death as an extension of life.
After the Conquest, the Spaniards imposed their faith on the tradition and centered it around the two Catholic holidays that mark the beginning of November, All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day.
In Mexico today the tradition is marked by all-night vigils in the cemeteries where relatives sweep the graves of loved ones, placing flowers, candles and food as offerings. In the homes, ofrendas — shrines or altars– are built with photos of the deceased, their favorite food and drink and other symbols representing their likes and dislikes.
The first day is dedicated to the memory of los angelitos — children thought of as little angels. On the second day, the vigils celebrate the adults in the cemeteries.
It is thought that during these days, the souls of the dead have special dispensation to visit their families, in keeping with the idea that death is not an end, but the beginning of a new life.
At the Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum in Pilsen, many of the traditions are made available to the community, including the making of sugar skulls and papel picado, colored paper cuttings featuring skeleton figurines. Pilsen’s neighborhood bakeries make pan de muerto, special sweet bread, often in the shape of skulls.
One recent Saturday afternoon, volunteer artists from Pros Arts Studio in Pilsen helped local children make clay boxes and noisemakers for a Day of the Dead procession.
Ramon Rubio, 9, patted two pieces of red clay together seeking the proper thickness for his creation –a tombstone.
“What shape is it?” asked Tatiana Rodriguez Giles, 26, assisting the children with their creations.
“Like this,” said Rubio, with one finger outlining his thumb as the model for the tombstone, which was going to decorate the top of his clay box.
Rubio said he was making the box in memory of his grandfather. “He died when I was little,” he said quietly.
At another table, Sara Duarte, 32, watched over her son Arturo as he molded small heads out of the clay to place atop his box. He rolled tiny bits of clay between his forefinger and thumb to fashion horns.
“Es un diablo,” said Arturo, 8. He was proud of his clay masterpiece.
Duarte, a native of Michoacan, Mexico, builds a Day of the Dead altar in her home each year, but some of her relatives no longer follow suit.
“In the U.S. we lose some of the tradition,” said Duarte. “This kind of a program teaches the children about our traditions and their values.”
At Casa Aztlan, a Pilsen community organization, as well as at Dvorak Park and Walsh Elementary School, Pros Arts holds a series of Day of the Dead workshops for children and families. They learn how to make tin skeletons, pan de muerto and offering plates to put on their ofrendas. Their activities will culminate with a Day of the Dead procession Monday at Dvorak Park.
“The artists play a really important role because most of the Day of the Dead traditions involve making things,” said Rodriguez Giles, a painter and arts educator who started the clay-making program with Pros Arts.
The Day of the Dead tradition also has crossed over to artists who are not Mexican.
At Collage, a gallery and store on Milwaukee Avenue in Wicker Park, Esther Soler, who is Puerto Rican, worked with Mexican artists to start a community altar.
“It’s a way of paying respect to the Mexican culture,” said Soler, who also has personal reasons for creating the altar.
She is still grappling with the death of her son Samuel, who died almost six years ago in a car accident. Soler opened the altar to anyone who would like to participate.
“This came from my soul,” said Soler, 55. “I wanted to include the community, instead of building one just for my son. It has given me strength.”
Next to a silver-framed photograph of her son, who was 28 when he died, are apples, oranges and several candles. On the other side of the round, multi-tiered altar is a black and white photo of a late friend, Francisco Sanchez, placed there by Esther’s brother, who is also named Samuel. There is a small cup of Cuban coffee, a few oak leaves and several classical music records, some of Sanchez’s favorite things.
“This is like a celebration of his life,” said Samuel Soler, 51, of the altar, the first he has ever made. “Once you understand what this really is about, it crosses all cultures.”
