A Change in Focus

Maribel Hernandez, a local artist with a special interest in teaching children the traditional arts and crafts of Mexico, will show how to decorate calaveras, or skulls, at a workshop Saturday.

This is a traditional craft--generally employed for the autumn celebration of Dia de los Muertes (Day of the Dead)--where sugar is sculpted and decorated into images of skulls. Saturday, kids will use paper cut-outs and paints, rather than sugar, but there will be a special display of finished sugar skulls, which kids can examine for decorating ideas. They can even buy and eat them if they wish.

Offering the program in Spanish and English is important to Hernandez because, she says, “Some of the [Spanish-speaking] kids are really artists, but they don’t go to art classes because they say, ‘Oh, everything is in English.’ ”

This remark might once have applied to the overall programs of Carnegie Museum--but no more. Celebrating and supporting Latino art and artists has become an important part of the museum’s mission.

The new centerpiece of the museum’s permanent collection is a recently acquired painting, “Aymara Ritual Cloth, Calavera and Car,” by Mexican American artist Frank Romero.

This Los Angeles-based artist has become well known nationally--particularly since his mural, “The Death of Ruben Salazar,” was acquired by the Smithsonian’s Museum of American Art in Washington.

Holly Woodson, the Carnegie’s museum educator who trains docents to explain exhibits to visitors, anticipates that they will be asked “Why is this museum starting to collect Latino art?”

What’s happening, she says, is that “Latinos are becoming more and more a force in painting in California, and gaining national recognition. This is the world we live in, and this month we are highlighting the Latino part of the museum’s collection.” Among the pieces featured are the works of local artists Sonya Fe and Omar d’Leon.

Kids can try their own hand at imaginative, freewheeling use of visual materials in the Carnegie’s “interactive gallery,” open this Saturday (and also during the museum’s regular Thursday to Sunday operating times). There, kids can put together surreal creations with magnetized images ranging from Mr. Potatohead to Salvador Dali.

In another gallery at the Carnegie this month, there happens to be a traveling exhibit about Salvador Dali: “Dali’s Mustache: A Photographic Interview by Salvador Dali and Philippe Halsman.”

It may give kids all sorts of ideas.

BE THERE

“Celebrate Latino Art and Culture,” Hispanic Heritage Month program for families with kids 6-16 includes art workshops, music and exhibition of works by Latino artists, Saturday from 2-4 p.m., Carnegie Art Museum, 424 South C St., Oxnard. Kids 16 and under, seniors and students free, adults $3. (805) 385-8157.