Alister Ramírez and Arturo Anguiano III are among the students for which a high school in Little Village was created following a highly publicized hunger strike in 2001.
Little Village Lawndale High School was built after the 19-day strike that began on Mother’s Day, when parents and community leaders pushed for Chicago Public Schools to follow through on their promise to build a high school in their neighborhood. The school was constructed four years later in Little Village, and serves students and their families from the neighboring South and North Lawndale neighborhoods, too.
Ramírez and Anguiano, both 17-year-old juniors, are among the dozens of students who will be displaying and selling their artwork Saturday at the Multicultural Arts School’s MASterpiece Art Festival. It’ll be followed by a 20th anniversary celebration of Little Village Lawndale High School.
The high school is made up of four thematic schools housed together on one campus that includes arts, math and science, social justice and world language curriculum. Students from all four schools are participating in this year’s show. Nearly 350 people attended last year’s show, according to theater teacher Edward Cisneros, who is helping students put on the fest.
The inclusion of even more community partners and students, plus the anniversary celebration, crowds are expected to be even bigger this year.
The campus will be transformed into a festival where students, food vendors, local artisans and community members can enjoy performances, buy one-of-a-kind pieces made by high school students, and participate in workshops hosted by teaching artists at the National Museum of Mexican Art.
“The thing that’s most exciting for me is just being able to once again show my artwork to other people,” said Anguiano, who participated in the festival last year by selling prints of the most popular drawings posted to his Instagram page.
Among his art this year is what he dubs a “mega poster,” made up of nine individual posters. Some have been left uncolored to represent his breakthrough with a recent bout of artist’s block. Anguiano invited other students to color in the pages, he said.
“It took a total of 11 days of work time to complete that drawing,” he said. “As a young artist, I want to inspire other young artists to keep progressing in their own art.”
For last year’s MASterpiece show, Ramírez worked on a self-portrait. She said she tries to make all of her art personal.
“I always struggle to look at myself in the mirror because I really don’t like how I look,” she said. “So that pushed me out of my comfort zone, putting my face on a huge canvas, and I visualized the feeling of people watching me.”
Ramírez said the experience of others looking at her work was a little “nerve-wracking,” but she ultimately enjoyed it, especially because she sold some of her pieces.
This year, Ramírez worked on a painting that includes elements of all of her work and some of the feelings she’s recently had around her work, including burnout and stress.
She’s excited to be able to create new types of pieces, too, she said.
“There’s a lot of different art out there,” she said. “There’s no one set definition of what it should be or what it should look like, or who should be making it. Don’t be afraid.”
Ramírez has also been creating art utilizing different accessories, including jewelry and hand-painted pairs of shoes.
The art show came together after holding focus groups with students and parents about what kind of event the community wanted, Cisneros said.
“We wanted them to gain that experience, that you can make money through your art,” he said. “Learning how to talk about it, learning how to price it, how to display it. ... All of that is what we were hoping for by having [this] festival.”
Cisneros said the hunger strikers were very adamant about the small-school model currently in place at LVLHS, “where students won’t get lost and fall through the cracks.”
The 20th anniversary ceremony on Saturday will celebrate one of those strikers, Manuela “Manuelita” García, who died in 2022 at the age of 96.
In addition, 22nd Ward Ald. Mike Rodríguez will kick off the ceremony by officially naming the street in front of the school in honor of García. The stretch of South Kostner Avenue from 31st Street to 33rd Street will be known henceforth as Manuela “Manuelita” García Way.
