Art class honors the dead, celebrates life

When Dia de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead, arrives, family members of departed souls set out water, candles, food and decorated sugar skulls to welcome their lost loved ones. Widely celebrated in Latin America, the day honors the dead as living entities. It celebrates the departed, and helps keep them present in life. This year's Dia de los Muertos celebration at CSU Monterey Bay will be held at 6 p.m. Nov. 2 in the University Center ballroom. The theme is "Hecho por Mano,” or artists of the Day of the Dead. Each year, a class in the Department of Visual and Public Art organizes the campus event, designs the program, including the theme, and builds the altars while learning about the ceremony’s history, tradition and community-building practice. All 35 seats in the popular class fill up quickly. On a recent Wednesday afternoon, a crew from KQED, the San Francisco-based PBS affiliate, attended a class to film a segment on Professor Amalia Mesa-Bains. Students had brought photos of their loved ones. With cameras rolling, they placed the photos and marigolds on altars they had constructed in previous classes. Dr. Mesa-Bains asked them to think about the people whose photos they had brought and reminded them to say “In memory of” before saying the name. Most students placed photos of family members on their altars. One brought a picture of Michael Jackson in addition to several snapshots of relatives. One placed an image of Frida Kahlo. Day of the Dead is a time for people to revere their ancestors and, in a way, make friends with death. “We can’t fear death,” one of the students said. “When you can recognize that, you can celebrate life.” The TV segment, produced for KQED’s Spark program, will air at 7:30 p.m. on Oct. 30 as part of This Week in Northern California. Spark is about Bay Area artists and arts organizations. More than a showcase for art objects and the artists who make them, Spark takes the audience inside the creative process to witness the challenges, opportunities and rewards of making art.

In addition to filming the class, the TV show visited Dr. Mesa-Bains at her studio in San Juan Bautista. Her work deals primarily with interpretations of traditional Chicano altars, both in contemporary formal terms and in their ties to the Chicano community and its history. As an author of scholarly articles and a internationally known lecturer on Latino art, she has enhanced understanding of multiculturalism and reflected major cultural and demographic shifts in the United States.