Mario Mena says he has noticed a change among the students in his street art class at Yollocalli, the youth section of the National Museum of Mexican Art. Fewer students are coming from the heavily Latino neighborhoods of Pilsen and Little Village. More of them are coming from the Southwest Side.
When he was given the opportunity to paint a mural on a building in Brighton Park, he saw it as an opportunity to give a boost to the community in which his students live.
This summer, Mena, who is from the Southwest, spent several weeks working with his students to create the mural for the building that houses Cook County Commissioner Alma Anaya’s office.
It features children strumming a guitar, ollieing on a skateboard, and jumping on flower heads, sending glittering pollen flying. Hands appear from the sky, holding up a traditional three-story Chicago apartment building, a two-story house, and a one-story bungalow, like those seen all over the Southwest Side.
“We’re trying to create a mural for the youth in their area,” Mena says, “something that gives them a public claim to access to their neighborhood, where they can walk past their families and hear that story: ‘Hey, I made that over there.'”
Community-based students paint this mural in Brighton Park.
“We need public spaces for the community that we feel ownership of,” says Mena. “We wanted to highlight the places where we grew up. We grew up in multigenerational homes where three or four families lived in one house. I grew up in a bungalow. Nothing embodies the Southwest Side feeling like the bungalows.”
Mena says he taught his students how to work with a client on a project and how to plan a mural so that it has real meaning. They worked through questions like: What do we want with this piece? What do we want to say? What is the story behind it and what makes it so important?
They decided to focus on nature because there aren’t many public green spaces in Brighton Park, Mena says: “If the park isn’t attached to a school, we don’t have a place for them to go.”
In this mural in Brighton Park, hands appear from the sky and hold up a traditional three-story Chicago apartment building, a two-story house, and a one-story bungalow.
Anaya says her favorite part of the mural at 4374 S. Archer Ave. are the things that at first glance look like fluttering dragonflies, but upon closer inspection turn out to be glowing, flying books.
While Mena and the children were painting, people from the neighborhood drove into the parking lot of the bank next door. And as they watched, the mural took shape.
Students from Mario Mena’s street art class at Yollocalli, the youth facility of the National Museum of Mexican Art, working on a mural in Brighton Park.
