An Interview with Artist William Estrada
About William Estrada:
William Estrada grew up in California, Mexico, and Chicago. His teaching and art-making practice focus on addressing inequity, migration, historical passivity, and cultural recognition in historically marginalized communities. He documents and engages experiences in public spaces to transform, question, and make connections to established and organic systems through discussion, creation, and amplification of stories through creativity already present. He is currently a faculty member at the UIC School of Art and Art History and a Teaching Artist at Telpochcalli Elementary School. For more info about William, visit werdmvmntstudios.com. William is a partner artist with JTNWI on the Just Transition Visioning Project.
Malaska
Tell me a little bit about yourself and your background as an artist and educator.
William
I've been teaching for a little bit over 27 years now. I started teaching art in the neighborhood when I was about 19. I was interested in thinking about how we could learn about art making to learn about our culture and the things happening in our neighborhood. Teaching is something that I wasn't initially interested in. I could have never seen myself as a teacher. But once I started teaching, I completely fell in love with it. I can't see myself doing anything else anymore.
I was born in Southern California to undocumented and migrant workers who worked in the fields. When the ranch where my parents worked burned down, we moved back to Mexico. I grew up in Jalisco. I pretty much grew up there till I was about between nine and eleven. Then we came to Chicago, and we've been here ever since.
Spanish was my primary language growing up, but I lost it through elementary and high school. I completely lost my Spanish. Art was one of the ways that I was able to reclaim my culture and my own identity. It was one of the places that gave me a sense of belonging. As an art teacher or artist, a lot of the work I do is reminding people of the power of art, the power that we have collectively as people. But also how we use art to learn from each other, celebrate each other, remind each other of our power, share our stories, and listen to each other. As we get older, we are told that creativity is not valued as much, so we let go of it. Part of my practice as an educator and artist is to remind people that not only little ones can do art but also encourage people to reclaim creativity and use art as a way of resistance and celebration.
Malaska
When did you fall in love with art and its power to help people express their voices? Was art introduced to you at a younger age?
William
Yeah! I think I've always loved art since I was young. My mom would buy me these coloring books, thick coloring books, and I would go through them in a matter of a day, two days. I was probably in kindergarten, where I would spend hours and hours coloring. When I came to Chicago in third grade, my social studies teacher, Mr. B., would give us these maps; when he was teaching us about geography, I would color them. One day, he told the class, "I need to show you all this wonderful map drawn by an artist in this class." Of course, everyone was like, “Who is it?” Then he showed my map! I got hooked on it, Malaska! I was, like, an artist, like, yes! Whenever he gave me anything, I would color it because I wanted him to call me an artist.
It wasn't until high school that I had an art class, which I loved. I took four years of art. But believe it or not, I did not want to be an artist. I didn't know that you could be an artist. I grew up predominantly in poor, black, and brown neighborhoods. Although art was around me all the time, art was celebrated through music and fashion, and there was a lot of graffiti. But I hadn't even considered attending art school or majoring in art. I wanted to be a psychologist.
Malaska
Wow. So, when did you make that change from psychology to art?
William
A couple of things happened: I had an excellent high school experience, but grades were not my focus. I wanted to be cool because I was extremely quiet and a giant nerd in elementary and middle school. So, I tried hard to make friends and be more outgoing. I was a shy kid and felt that high school was my chance to recreate myself. Because of that, I didn't do much schoolwork but still passed my classes. I would get Bs on my tests, and my professors would tell me, "William, you're so smart. Why aren't you doing the work?" They would be frustrated with me. I did that for my freshman and sophomore years. I started taking school a bit more seriously in my junior year, but it wasn't because I wanted to be a good student. It was because a teacher I respected commented about me that upset me. He said, "William wants to change the world, but he's too busy watching reruns of TV shows," so I started doing all my work to prove him wrong.
In senior year, my art teacher, Mrs. Stallings, asked me what I would do for school. I told her I was going to go into psychology. She said, “I thought you wanted to be an artist.” I told her, “That's not a profession; that's not a job.” I applied for psychology, but they didn't accept me because of my grades. Mr. Collins told me, "Why don't you apply to art school just to see what happens?" I applied to three art schools and got accepted into all of them. When I graduated from high school, she signed me up to take classes at the Art Institute on Saturdays, where we would do figure drawing, painting, sculpture, and more. I fell in love with it. My art teacher was a significant influence on my identity as an artist. I got into art school and learned a lot. I completely embraced the life of an artist. I started drinking coffee and going out to poetry readings and became a poet.
Malaska
I always wanted to go to a poetry slam! Honestly, that's amazing. It seems to me you had a great support system on your side. Can you tell me a little bit about your goals and aspirations and how you evolved as an artist in terms of advocacy?
William
When I was at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, one of my friend Star Padilla, invited me to teach. I started teaching at Little Village, Chicago's Boys and Girls Club. For a long time, I separated my art-making from my teaching. I would do figure drawings, like paintings of objects, very traditional art making, but my teaching was very radical. In my teaching, I talked about immigration and collective power, race, social justice, redlining and segregation, pollution, labor movements, and civil rights. I made my art, which had nothing to do with activism. Then, my teaching was all political. I struggled to merge them for a long time. I stopped making art because I struggled so much. I poured all my energy into teaching. By that time, I had already graduated from school, and I was primarily teaching in communities.
In early 2000, I saw that these artists were making beautiful prints about politics, which is what I wanted to do, but I didn't know how to do it. I knew how to teach about it and how to guide students. I started working with organizations and learned about what they were organizing and their campaigns. I would partner with somebody or an organization to have this conversation and learn from them. My teaching and art practice are merged, which is fantastic.
Malaska
Can you tell me about the project you did in a Little Village?
William
Chicago is pretty segregated. I grew up on the southwest side of Chicago, which is predominantly black and brown. After I graduated from college, I worked for Pros Arts, where I taught with various other artists community art in the Pilsen Neighborhood and in collaboration with school teachers in Chicago Public Schools. I also started working at the National Museum of Mexican Art. I worked for their youth initiative, which was called Yollocalli Youth Museum. Now, it's called Yollocalli Arts Reach. It was an after-school art program for teens. I taught mural painting, street theater, puppet making, and intergenerational classes with kids, grandparents, and parents. One of my students told me an elementary school in Little Village was looking for a teaching artist. Little Village neighborhood is a predominantly Mexican American neighborhood. It's one of the largest concentrations of Mexican and Mexican Americans outside of LA in the United States. I applied and got this job as a teaching artist at Telpochcalli Elementary School.
I had these incredible conversations with kindergarteners about Disney cartoons and why they always represent us as the “bad guys”. I began thinking about adults having such a hard time talking about race or how we're represented. I want to have these conversations out in the neighborhood. That was when my art projects started moving from inside the school to out into the neighborhood. I started doing workshops out on the street in 2002. I started working in a Little Village because of the elementary school.
Malaska
Is that how the Little Village Dreams project came about then with the elementary school collaboration?
William
The elementary school started a non-profit. That became its separate entity called the Telpochcalli Community Education Project (Tcep). Families and community members started this non-profit because of so many needs. Little Village Environmental Justice Organization (LVEJO) partnered with Tcep. In 2020, a coal plant and a small set of smokestacks were scheduled to be demolished. When they were demolished, a massive cloud of dust covered a two-mile radius of the neighborhood. LVEJO started organizing; they had been protesting the demolition, and they had been calling attention to the fact neighbors didn't know that the demolition was going to happen. They planned an organizing campaign to bring attention to what happened.
I was showing up because I was interested in learning. After all, it was close to my house. It was a part of the neighborhood where I would ride my bike through, and it was really hard to breathe. I could feel the smog in my nostrils. Through this, I met Edith Tovar, who was the organizer of this campaign. I helped make graphics. I was part of this artist's collective. As a collective, there are about 21 of us, and we all develop these graphics to screen print. They were so cool, so we began printing them as coloring sheets. We inverted all the graphics and made projections onto the buildings. It was a huge success. Many people showed up to make art with us and learn about what happened with the demolition.
Last year, I worked with another group of artists called Mobilize Creative Collaborative; four of us got funding to work with the city of Chicago, and they gave us a considerable grant. We did these block parties where we organized various artists, food, and activities. We did these multi-day block parties in six different neighborhoods in Chicago. Then, in 2023, I was invited to apply for a grant. That's when I connected with Edith again and talked about how we should make a coloring book. We can make a coloring book and turn all these coloring pages into a mural. We have these block parties that we've been having, but smaller. I wrote and got the grant. We called the project Little Village Dreams. Now, I'm just like, how can we do more of this?
Malaska
I don't even know if you realize, but when we first talked about art, you mentioned your mom used to get you coloring books, and now you're making coloring books to help a movement. Like wow, that's amazing!
William
Omg! No, I didn't even think about it. If you hadn't made that connection, I would not have made it myself.
Malaska
Yeah! It's funny how it all started with the coloring books; now you have this amazing project. But that being said, you spoke about the projects you have done in the past. Can you tell us about the upcoming Just Transition Visioning Project you're working on with JTNWI?
William
I met JTNWI through conversations that I was having with the Little Village Environmental Justice Organization (LVEJO). I had heard about coal ash but wasn't entirely sure what that was. I've seen the coal ash being covered with tarps or just sitting there completely exposed in East Chicago when I worked at SkyArt in South Chicago.
My biggest goal is to invite as many people as possible to make art in their community. How do we have conversations with people about coal ash, not only coal ash, but just the environment itself, the different things happening in the region that affect our water, our air, our livelihood, and the nature around us that we depend on? Just Transition Northwest Indiana is growing. So, this is an excellent opportunity for us to tell people about JTNWI and learn about what people in the neighborhoods and the region are thinking about. How are they thinking about the relationship with NIPSCO? What are their relationships with BP? What is their relationship to the water? to nature?
Through these projects, I'll be able to meet more people and have conversations with them. Where I can develop artwork based on those conversations, the thing that brings me joy and artmaking is being with people; it's learning from them, laughing with them, and sometimes crying with them, and at times, getting into heated debates with them, but learning about the things that people are passionate about and believe in. Then, create art based on those passions and share those stories.
The Visioning Project is that. We're at the beginning of a much larger conversation happening all around the region. The environment has been ignored for so long for production and jobs. It's been shoved to the side. People are getting sick. The explosion happened a couple of days ago at the BP refinery. Thinking about what chemicals are being dumped into our drinking water. No announcements or warnings are being made. People want to know! People are really upset that corporations and government officials are not being transparent and are not being told that these accidents are happening. This Visioning Project is a way for us to build these networks of people. We can organize ourselves to mobilize ourselves, learn from each other, and teach each other. Build these networks of support so this doesn't continue happening.
Malaska
Another thing that I hope we get out of this project is getting the next generation involved. I feel like our generation, my generation, is not aware of environmental justice happening blocks away from us. On campus, we don't talk about environmental justice. We don't talk about what's going on in the area. I'm hoping that the Visioning Project will bring a light to that awareness for the next generation to continue to fight.
William
Yeah! I agree with you. I don't want to say that it's just your generation. It's designed that way, so we don't know.
Malaska
Yeah, I agree. I think if it were incorporated into our education and shown to us at a young age, maybe we would have a better connection in learning more about the topics we are discussing today. But right now, I feel that we are living life without that awareness, and there's that disconnection. Just to shift the conversation a little, my next question to you is for us at JTNWI: the Just Transition framework describes a transition from the extractive, fossil fuel economy of today to the renewable, regenerative economy of tomorrow- what does a Just Transition look like to you? How will you frame that for you? In your own words?
William
Oh, I love this question! I love nature. We should not compete with nature. We should have green spaces where we're able to walk, and we should have access to clean water. I also love technology. I love geeking out over it. Technology should not overpower nature or nature overpower technology. There has to be a balance where nature and technology are being merged. People can enjoy technology without sacrificing trees or clean water and air. If we can live in green spaces, we can grow our food, do collective farming, and have public transportation and high-speed rail lines. That's what, for me, just transition looks like. It's this collective community building where there are plenty of resources for everyone and fresh fruit for everyone. We're working, but we're not working to live; we're just living and happen to work. I think many people are working to survive, and surviving is not living.
Malaska
Yeah, the next question kind of intertwines with that - how do you see the importance of intersecting artwork and environmental justice? I know you've kind of hit upon it with unity and making sure people are aware. Is there anything else you want to add to that?
William
Art helps us practice our future. What I mean by that is that sometimes it's really hard for us to imagine something different because we're just trying to survive the presence. Artwork allows us to imagine things and make those things a reality through the art we create. Art is a way for us to build the futures that we want to live in. We're taking our imagination and building things that don't yet exist. But through our creation, they are now possible because now people can envision it.
Malaska
Yeah! Great point. What has been one of the most fulfilling art projects you've worked on?
William
I have not yet done my most fulfilling work.. There's so much more to come. That my most fulfilling project hasn't happened yet. There are a lot of projects that I love, but I hope that I have not done the most fulfilling project yet.
Malaska
Well, I'm excited to find out what it will be!
William
I'm excited, too! I'm so curious.
Malaska
Let's end it with a fun question. What is the funniest art trend or style you've encountered in your career?
William
One of the funniest trends is that many more people are getting professionally painted portraits or photographs of their pets. That is hilarious. They love their dog, cat, fish, or parrots, and they will have portraits painted of them. There's a massive market for that.
Malaska
I have seen photography shoots for dogs, like a Halloween theme. Super cute!
William
I love it. It makes me crack up. They're super hilarious. I would have never considered having a portrait of my pet like that.
Malaska
Okay, I have only one more question. What is something you'd like to convey to anyone reading the blog?
William
If you're in the region, I hope you come out and meet us, hang out with us, and allow us to meet you. If you're not in the region, I hope that you know, if you're an artist, that you should reach out to organizations that are organizing in your region and see how you might be able to support them. And then, if you're a community organizer, I hope that you'll be able to reach out to artists in your region.
Malaska
Thank you for sitting down with me today. I learned so much from you! I’m excited to be working with you!
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