Community Arts Caucus (CAC) Column: Fall 2023

We Take Care of Each Other: Spotlighting the Work of William Estrada

Column by: Tim Abel, Jennifer Bergmark, Carina Maye, and Angela Baldus

[[image #### "We Take Care of Each Other was created at the beginning of the pandemic in response to communities gathering resources for mutual aid. The graphic was distributed across communities digitally and in print form. Permission to use this photo was granted by the artist."]]

As CAC Co-Directors, we engaged with the question: What does it mean to be a socially engaged art practitioner? In thinking about this question, four of the Co-Directors carved out this space in our column as an opportunity to honor artist William Estrada and his service to the community through his artwork. Adorning the walls of the Hyde Park Art Center, William Estrada’s prints show his faith and commitment to collective making. He has dedicated himself to his practice and to actively providing a space for people to access artmaking. Below we outlined a few of the great contributions of William Estrada in recent years.

Multiples and Multitudes is Estrada’s first solo exhibition, which opened on July 22, 2023, at the Hyde Park Art Center in Chicago, Illinois. The exhibition title speaks to his long-term practice of bringing communities together through artmaking, specifically through printmaking, which is enabled by the mobility of his Mobile Art Cart featured at the center of the exhibition. Having a practice that is so multifaceted and that welcomes others helps reimagine and resituate art as a responsive part of public and educational spaces, showing how a community art practice can become a web of care.

The generosity of William Estrada’s practice can also be seen in his work as a visiting artist in a recent collaborative project to create positive messaging reflecting an elementary school community. During his first site visit, Estrada opened up conversations through his designs, which asked students to answer the prompt, I choose this school because… This prompt provided a space that invited each student to answer why they enjoy being a part of this school. Posters were made by letting each student screenprint their own poster from screens that Estrada designed; then, students filled in the space with colorful Sharpies. To continue the conversation, he returned for a second visit to make T-shirts that incorporated designs and messaging created by the students. Each group of students worked alongside Estrada to print their shirts. As the students enthusiastically pulled their new shirts over the shirts they were already wearing, the care was visible in this exchange.

Perhaps another way to address what it means to be a socially engaged art practitioner is to twist the question into another direction and tease out a related thread. We might ask ourselves what makes our work meaningful, or what values, attributes, and characteristics are important to being and becoming a community arts practitioner. Working with William Estrada is akin to closely studying what it means to be doing this work. A spirit of generosity is embodied and expressed in his actions and words. In working with Estrada as a CAC Co-Director, we have been invited to know different projects and stories that inform his work, including the Mobile Street Art Cart, Chicago Family Portraits, Radical Printshop, Justseeds Artists’ Cooperative, the Chicago ACT Collective, Mobilize Creative Collaborative, and his many roles teaching in and outside of institutions. Estrada listens to, responds with, and revisits the stories that are shared with him and in doing so, he acknowledges and uplifts what is important to others as an integral part of what is important to him.

[[image #### "Installation at Hyde Park Art Center of the Mobile Street Art Cart and screen-printed graphics generated as parts of public programming across various Chicago neighborhoods. Permission to use this photo was granted by the artist."]]

We took the time to highlight William Estrada as an artist, community advocate, and practitioner because he has worked tirelessly over the years. William Estrada’s Multiples and Multitudes solo exhibition runs through October 29, 2023, at Hyde Park Arts Center in Chicago, Illinois. As we move forward over this year, CAC is looking to allow the question of what does it mean to be a socially engaged art practitioner? to enhance our understanding of the dynamics of this as a continuing dialogue.

Excited about this conversation? Please send us your ideas, projects, or other socially engaged art practitioners that you think could help us think about the potential of community arts to communityartscaucus@gmail.com.

William Estrada, Tim Abel, Jennifer Bergmark, Carina Maye, and Angela Baldus, CAC Co-Directors