Proposal

Project Title: Behind the Walls of La Villita.

Purpose and Objectives: A community based art project centered around my neighborhood in Little Village, Chicago and the way young people I grew up with cope with their mental health while growing up dealing with the struggles in the predominantly Mexican community. This art project will display an interpreted proposed mural based off of recorded interviews with close friends residing in the Little Village area talking about their experiences living both the beauty and fears of their community. The interviews will focus around both the person’s memory in living in that neighborhood. This project will allow people to describe how their childhoods, teenage years, and early adult lives have shaped them to be the person they are today. This project will also view Little Village in the past as well as the present and how it has changed or remained the same.

Methods:. The interviews used for the project will most likely be conducted by asking people I grew up with (ranging from ages 20-25) to volunteer to be a part of the project or also by creating a post on social media sites such as facebook or instagram in which young people are invited and encouraged to participate in the interview. The interviews will be based on participant experiences and after taking those interviews, I will be able to create a proposed mural taking the words and emotions from the interviews and learn how people interpret their experiences and how I am able to then interpret them in an artistic point of view while also being a resident of the community myself and sharing many of these memories with these people.

Deliverables: Conducting interviews virtually and asking about participant’s best and worst memories living in the neighborhood. All participants will be young people from ages 20-25 who grew up in the Little Village community. A virtual drawing of a community mural will eventually be inspired and developed by interpreting the interviews conducted and taking into consideration common grounds and individualities as part of its design.

Exhibition/Presentation plan: After the interviews are conducted and recorded, I will be creating a large digital drawing of a mural using adobe software such as Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop, which will be based on my interpretation of people’s memories. I will also be taking photography around the neighborhood of Little Village centering around its Mexican-American culture and the people who work there day after day. This photography will help in my interpretation of the community that contributes to the neighborhood’s culture. I plan to display this project digitally in some way, either through social media or a website so that people from the neighborhood are able to experience the display themselves and possibly share their own memories creating a larger community and shared memories.

Timeline

  • Coming up with people to interview
    • Close friends I grew up with in LV
      • Rocio Padilla
        • Yanet Flores
        • Emmauel Zavala
        • Jesus Martinez
        • Natalie Valdez
        • Sirena Didiana
        • Jarissa Herrera
        • Noe Perez
  • Drafting interview questions that might lead to a successful conversation
    • Best and worst memory growing up in LV
    • Watching friends each take their own life route
    • Dealing with gangs in the neighborhood
  • Doing recorded Zoom interviews
  • Sketch out a draft of a potential mural 
  • Decide whether it will be in painting or digital
  • Work on drawing 
  • Make a montage of all interviews to serve as background voices for art piece
  • Once drawing is done, find a way to display it 
  • Find a way to show work to community virtually 
    • Facebook event 
    • Video

Methodology

  • Create tentative interview questions. About 5 questions to get people comfortable talking.
  • Create an email or message to send out to people I want to interview.
  • Have recorded zoom meetings or voice recorded face to face meetings. 
  • Take pictures of murals/artwork in Little Village that inspire me.
  • Look up art made by local artists from the city that I interview.
  • Make weekly sketches of stuff I would like to add to the mural after speaking to each person.
  • Design a possible color palette
  • Try to design something digitally on adobe draw or scan sketches and draw over them digitally

At the end of this project, I want to be able to display my proposed mural design on social media platforms, receive feedback as well as share it on a possible website of mine that I will be creating in the future. Later on, I am hoping to collaborate with a muralist and get permission from the city to actually create this mural somewhere in the community of Little Village.

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