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Day of the Dead Event with Teresa Magaña a Huge Success!

We have been honored to invite to Loyola for the third time, Teresa Magaña, an emerging artist living and working in Chicago. Teresa always knows how to connect us with our ancestral roots. Growing up with a rich Mexican culture in both Chicago and southern Texas has influenced her work greatly. She is self-taught in her craft and works with a variety of mediums. Teresa also provides cultural art workshops to public libraries, schools and private groups. She is a teaching artist with The National Museum of Mexican Art, The Port Ministries,  and works at Chicago Public Schools in after-school and summer art programming. Teresa is a member of the all female artist collective Mujeres Mutantes and  is also co-owner of Pilsen Outpost, a retail art shop and gallery.

Her visits during the Day of the Dead have motivated Professor Brenda Carrillo to teach her Loyola students about the importance of connecting to their deceased loved ones.  Teresa not only helps students connect to their  recently departed loved ones; she makes them aware that their Aztec roots are part of them, and their beliefs shine a vibrant and happy light on death.

Teresa shares with the students and faculty the custom of painting calaveras, spending time with loved ones, eating delicious commemorative food and focusing on the celebration of life.  The Aztecs believed that the final stage of death occurs only when our loved ones are forgotten.

Hence, we celebrate the memories of who they are in order to make their memories immortal.  Teresa has a famous quote in one of her art pieces, "Unable are the loved to die, for love is immortality" and this inspires us to believe how love influences us to continuously remember those that have passed on to a better existence.