Crear Studio featured artists Lisa Alvarez and Juliana Rico in La Maestra, a mixed media exhibition that reflects on loss, resistance, and the role of students and educators in times of violence and change. La Maestra hosted an opening reception on October 16, presented a special art practice on November 6 in conjunction with Viva La Vida (a Dia de los Muertos festival in downtown Santa Ana) and was on display until November 15.

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About the Artists:

Lisa Alvarez was profoundly affected by the 2014 Iguala mass kidnapping as an educator of over 20 years at Irvine Valley College. In response, Alvarez constructed a garment composed of newspaper clippings and photos of the student victims famously known as the Ayotzinapa 43. She wore the garment to various protests and Día de los Muertos gatherings starting about a month after the students’ disappearance to remind everyone of the students’ lives. She continued this demonstration for years to honor the Ayotzinapa 43 and all missing persons. With the continuing COVID-19 pandemic, Alvarez has elected to display the garment for the first time in La Maestra to continue the tradition.

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Juliana Rico has taught photography for nearly 10 years at California State University Fullerton, Chaffey College, Santa Ana College, Golden West College, and most recently at Cal Poly Pomona. A first-generation college student herself, Rico noticed many of her students, most of them Latinx, were also first-generation college students. Rico then considered her teaching practice as integral to her own art. La Maestra featured curated work by students Rico has mentored that center social movements, upheavals, and celebrations and explore personal, familial, and communal loss and strength through documentary photography.