Garcia leads art center she attended as a girl
Tacked onto a bulletin board behind Marcela Garcia’s desk at the Walker’s Point Center for the Arts is a picture of a girl painting a poinsettia on a red clay pot.
Garcia guesses she was 11 years old then, participating in afterschool arts programming at the organization she now leads. She took the helm in December 2016, marking a new era for the organization. WPCA is celebrating its 30th year in 2017 with a director who experienced its programming firsthand.
In that youthful photo, Garcia wears a turtleneck sweater printed with flowers and hearts and a big white bow atop her head. Her eyes are locked on the pot. As a child, Garcia came every week to the center, then at S. 9th St. and W. National Ave.
She remembers learning how to manifest ideas, sketch them out and share them with others.
“We’d paint and we’d be speaking in Spanish about what we were doing and excited that we were all at different schools but here we are painting a pot for a plant,” she said.
Garcia’s family moved to Walker’s Point from Guadalajara, Mexico, when she was 5 and soon began to attend programs at WPCA. For Garcia, creating art at the center allowed her to imagine a world different than the one surrounding her. In the early 1990s, Walker’s Point was far from the corridor of restaurants and breweries it is today. The center offered a safe space away from violence and gang activity.
WPCA started in 1987 at W. National Ave. and S. 5th St. The idea was to provide a quality art experience through its gallery and arts education programs to people in Walker’s Point. More than 1,000 kids come through the center’s activities each year; most live in the neighborhood.
The community’s needs are different today than when she was growing up, Garcia said. Issues of poverty and inequity continue to exist, but she’s looking for ways WPCA can reinvent itself to be relevant for another 30 years. She wants the center to be a safe space for conversations, especially for refugees and immigrants.
“Hopefully when you do go home, you feel at ease that there are folks that are with you on that journey of creating change to a more just and equitable world,” she said.
WPCA played an integral role in Garcia’s life. She learned how to interact with people different from herself. Creating art filled her free time, and her mixed-media works have been shown around Milwaukee.
She graduated from Rufus King International High School in 2002 and earned a degree in English from the University of WisconsinMadison. She moved back to Milwaukee and worked in government, education and nonprofit settings. But she kept ties with WPCA, creating an ofrenda for its Dia de Los Muertos exhibition each year. She felt empowered seeing herself as an artist. It’s the same feeling she wants to cultivate in children every day.
Garcia is not the only person who has returned to the center after participating in youth programs. Germán Gómez, who attended art education programming there, now interns at WPCA while a student at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s Peck School of the Arts. His artwork was featured in the exhibition “Thirty” this spring that showed artists who have played an integral role in WPCA’s 30 years in the community.
Garcia said what she enjoys most about art is its power to open dialogues and act as a bridge to community development. Prints in her office from Carlos Cortez and Melanie Cervantes are focused on social justice , speaking to the power of women.
“Not everyone we touched are artists, but everyone we touch sees the value of the arts in who they are,” she said.
WPCA will celebrate its anniversary throughout the year. Currently on display is “Transplant Eyes,” featuring artwork from Midwestbased artists who are from other parts of the world.