ART : Mural Explores Class Struggles

Faces of ancestors--a Mayan warrior, an Asian martial artist, abolitionist Sojourner Truth breaking chains from her wrists, a Native American wearing a brightly colored headdress--peer from two walls of a building at Venice High School.

Painted in the Cubist style on a background of orange, brown and red, the mural is a collage of images depicting centuries of oppression, struggle and hope.

Through the symbols flows Langston Hughes’ question: “What happens to a dream deferred?”

“One face is pleading for understanding; the face of a child is reaching out, with hope for the future,” said artist Jesus Frausto, an 18-year-old senior. The most powerful image, Frausto said, is the Native American.

“Calling out for justice,” he said, “remembering all the broken treaties.”

Fifteen Venice High school students spent two years working on the mural dedicated to Hughes’ question. Under the direction of art teacher Marco Elliott, the students designed the artwork to represent the need for peace, the struggle for justice, and an understanding of the past.

Near the words “What Happens to a Dream Deferred?” is the face of corporate America, a man wearing dark sunglasses reflecting dollar signs. In his fingers are strings, which he uses to gleefully manipulate the brown puppets. The message here, said senior Karina Hurtado, 19, must be heeded. “We have to free our minds and stop being like puppets,” she said.

Elliott said he came up with the idea in the fall of 1992. “I had the students write essays on the riots, and they came up with themes surrounding class struggle and the appreciation of other cultures,” he said.

A commercial art teacher who designed another mural at Venice High, Elliott had his students develop the prototype for the mural by creating collages using magazine photos.

Elliott also saw the mural as an opportunity to expose his students to Cubism, a style that reduces natural forms to geometric shapes.

Elliott, who was born and raised in France, hadn’t known of the Hughes poem until hearing it on the radio. “I thought it would be perfect for the mural,” Elliott said. “What better way to depict the Los Angeles riots?”

After the Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department earmarked $5,000 for the project in 1993, students began painting the first wall. Work on the opposite wall began earlier this year, after the school received a $5,000 grant from the Social and Public Art Resource Center, a city agency that has sponsored dozens of murals throughout Los Angeles since 1989.

Students worked after school and on weekends, and some who had graduated during the past two years returned to help.

Mario Henriquez, 20, said he sometimes spent nine-hour days working on the mural. Now attending Santa Monica College, Henriquez said he once thought tagging was the only way to get widespread exposure for his message.

“But when I started this, I felt that maybe I could send a positive message, to make people think about all the oppression that still exists,” he said. And maybe, he added, future generations will see his work, and think even more.