Artist Statement

This semester I have had the privilege to work with the Vieau Elementary School in Walker’s Point on Milwaukee’s south side. With this multimedia essay we were asked to tell a story using pictures and as few words as possible.
To start the multimedia essay I wanted to talk about the history of Walker’s Point where the elementary school is located. In 1834 George Walker established a fur trading post and later in the 1920s this attracted the first Latin American immigrants to work in tanneries. This industry settled one of Wisconsin’s first Latin-American populations where it is still a very Latin community today.
I then described the city bus ride from the eastside down to the south side and the differences I encountered. I currently live on the east side of Milwaukee where there is a high population of white college students, then going down to the south side where there is a high population of Hispanics and African Americans. The school itself has a 97% Hispanic population giving the area and the school a completely new environment for me coming from a school with over 90% being white.
The school itself is also very different compared to the elementary school that I attended. Like I stated earlier the school has a 97% Hispanic population but more than that, a majority of the children in the school are bilingual, speaking both Spanish and English. I was not exposed to other languages until I was in seventh grade when our school offered different languages. I also had preconceived ideas about the attitude of the children and whether they would listen to me. After the first day working with the kids I knew this semester of service learning would be really fun because the kids would be easy to work with.
For this project I found it really hard to take the “right” picture that I could use to tell a story. I found it difficult because it was hard to include everything that I wanted to include in a picture and get different things in focus to improve the artistic view. Most of the pictures I did take turned out good but the low-light pictures I took did not turn out as well as I wanted to.
I feel incredibly lucky to be able to work with these kids this semester. For this semester I think I will learn a lot not only about myself with how well I can teach/help someone but I will also learn about other cultures.