Una celebración de Día de los Muertos

The Day of the Dead, also known as All Souls’ Day, is a celebration of life and death, a joyful time for people to remember the deceased and honor their memory through festivals, meaningful offerings and ofrendas, decorative altars.

This year, the St. Rita World Language and Fine Art Departments have collaborated to celebrate the Day of the Dead in many ways around campus.

In the Mendel hallway, Mrs. Sarah Arteaga's art classes — Art 1, Mixed Media, Visual Arts, and AP Studio Art — explored Pablo Picasso’s famous The Old Guitarist. Students recreated this iconic painting as a Calavera or skeleton portrait. The students in Art 1 and Mixed Media used Oil Pastels, practicing overlapping and blending. The advanced classes, Visual Art, and AP Studio used Acrylic paint.

Mrs. Colleen Earley's Spanish 4 Honors class also completed an art project in their study of artistic forms by artists from Spanish speaking countries around the world, including Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, Diego Velázquez, Salvador Dalí, Fernando Botero, and Pablo Picasso. Their assignment was to choose one symbol of the Day of the Dead and draw it in four different artist styles.

The Spanish Club, moderated by Mrs. Earley, displayed an expansive ofrenda, or Day of the Dead altar, in front of our Dining Hall. This altar is open to faculty, staff and students and displays items in honor of their loved ones. In addition, these altars are adorned with diamond art crosses created by Mrs. Earley's AP Spanish class and painted crosses created by Mrs. Arteaga's art class.

Additionally, Mr. Tom Bogucki's Spanish 1 classes created altars or ofrendas to commemorate members from the Chicago Fire Department and Chicago Police Department who have passed away. Students researched and wrote biographies for these fallen heroes as well as hand crafted decorations for these ofrendas including sugar skulls, papel picado, and tissue paper flowers. These are displayed in the St. Rita Shrine Chapel near the mosaic honoring the Chicago Police and Fire Departments (drawn by Tim McCarthy ’85 and created by Joe Folisce).

Mr. Frank Tellez's Spanish 1 class, made up of freshmen and sophomore students, also put together an ofrenda consisted of homemade items provided by students in that class. This display can be viewed across from our Dining Hall.