Latino Cultural Center Summer Camp Paints Free-Form Graffiti

By Mario Tarradell, Public Relations & Marketing Manager

The colorful, free form fascination of graffiti enlightened the Big Thought 2015 Thriving Minds Summer Camp at the Latino Cultural Center. During the four-week program, 25 students reveled in theater, dance, visual art, cinematography and photography guided by the center’s two-pronged summer exhibit, “Maestro Filiberto Chapa: Artist and Teacher, 1980-2006 and the Sour Grapes: Celebrating Fifteen Years of the Collective.”

Students interviewed members of Dallas’ Sour Grapes, the Hispanic art troupe best known for its vibrant graffiti murals, to help them weave stories that were incorporated into final performance vignettes, said Jessica Trevizo, LCC’s Education and Outreach Coordinator.

In addition to the acted vignettes, which were performed at the center’s 304-seat theater, they created a mini-movie and dance performances that connected one vignette to the next. Stencil and graffiti projects allowed the students to flex their visual arts muscles outside at the center’s loading dock.

The Latino Cultural Center again depended on the partnering support of Cara Mía Theatre Company, which provided all of the teaching artists.

“We’ve been really good with Cara Mía Theatre Company, growing organically, “ says Trevizo. “We create the curriculum but let the kids have ownership of it. We give them the content, but the final production is a student creation.”

Working on the piece that culminated the summer camp bolstered teamwork and exposed the kids to different opportunities. Children see their potential in others that look like them and excel at their chosen craft. So the presence of the Sour Grapes artists proved transformative.

“It helps the kids develop as people,” says Trevizo. “Getting to interact with Latino artists and a Latino audience, it helps them from an identity standpoint. If I want to be an artist I can do it because here are Latinos doing what I want to do.”