DOWNEY — Last year, to the disappointment of more than 30,000 potential attendees, Downey’s popular Dia de los Muertos Art Festival had to be canceled due to Measure S remodeling and upgrades at the Downey Theatre. This year, live events at the theatre are canceled due to the COVID pandemic.

Not wanting to disappoint fans for a second year in a row, the Downey Theatre is preparing an extensive online event that will feature many of the favorite activities of prior festivals. 

Dia de los Muertos, Day of the Dead, is an annual Mexican holiday dedicated to remembering and celebrating deceased family members. The day is often marked with memorial altars, graveside visits, and special food preparation. Sugar calaveras (skulls), skeletons, and marigolds symbolize the festivities.

“Everything you experience at our normal festival,” says Amber Vogel, Director of the Downey Theatre, “we’re trying to represent that component or that category in this virtual art festival.”

Entitled “En la Casa” (At Home), this year’s seventh annual Dia de los Muertos Art Festival is scheduled for Sunday, November 1. The “interactive landing” page will go live at 11:00 a.m., reports Vogel, “and stay open into the evening. We have over 50 participating organizations and vendors that will contribute content to this virtual festival.” 

Stay Gallery, another well-known Downey art venue, is a festival partner and will host an extensive 3-D art exhibition, La Ofrenda (The Offering), featuring original work by area artists. Gabriel Enamorado, Director of Stay Gallery, says that the site might be expanded to two virtual rooms because they have had so many submissions.

Vogel says her team started planning back in April, when quarantine advisories were most restrictive. “We knew pretty early on that we weren’t going to be able to have a live festival,” she recounts. “We had a lot of participants who were really looking forward to having it this year, and of course when COVID hit, they were pretty disappointed.” 

Created in 2013, this annual free event quickly become a favorite with the general public. The format was family-friendly with something for everyone. Inside the theatre traditional Mexican dance groups performed onstage, classic movies were shown, and the lobby held displays of original artwork and an exhibition of altars celebrating family members and ancestors. Outside were activities for children, vendors, and food trucks.

Enthusiastic community response prompted the festival to grow each year until it covered the entire parking lot in front of the city library and the promenade between the library and City Hall. There were multiple stages for live bands and dancers, and decked-out cars displaying “trunk altars.” Large sculptures and life-size costumed skeletons were also on display. Vogel reports that conservative crowd estimates were as high as 35,000 attendees.

This year, with public events still banned by government order, the Downey Theatre exemplifies the thousands of art and educational groups across the country that are seeking ways to adapt to pandemic restrictions while still offering meaningful entertainment to the public.

Online Festival Events

Icons will link viewers of this year’s online festival to videos of ballet folklorico dance groups and various cumbia, mariachi, and bolero bands.  

There will also be several interactive educational components explaining the traditions and history of this Mexican holiday. For the first 100 people to sign in, well-known artist Diego Marcial Rios will lead a workshop on how to make and decorate the traditional sugar calaveras (skulls). Other links will take children to various sites for arts and crafts.

“Kids at home will be able to print out all of these arts and crafts and do them at home,” Vogel explains. All events, including workshop participation, are free.

Families can stream the classic black and white film “Macario,” about a poor man who makes a deal with the devil, via the Downey City Library icon. There will also be links to Story Time and the bilingual Mil y un Cuentos (A Thousand and One Stories).

The “Mercado” icon will take viewers to a virtual shopping area where people can buy selected Dia de los Muertos articles such as hats, shirts, buttons, etc.

“We’ve hand-picked these vendors,” says Vogel, because we worked with them before and we want to feature them.”

The history and images of Dia de los Muertos altars and “trunk” altars will also be available for viewing.

A separate icon will link viewers to the work of featured artist Martin Sanchez, who is part of an art movement sometimes referred to as “found” art, a genre that uses repurposed materials to create mixed media and three-dimensional pieces. Using the discards of modern-day society, Sanchez creates works that reflect themes of Mexican myths and symbolism. The link will include an interview with Sanchez and a private, guided tour of his studio/gallery.

George Newman’s Casa Calaveras, normally a walk-through exhibit in prior festivals, will have a link for online viewing this year. Life-size figures of a dead couple are posed in various scenes to tell the story of what happens as they return each year for Dia de los Muertos.

The 3-D art exhibition, La Ofrenda, hosted by Stay Gallery, is presenting themed works especially created for the festival. Enamorado explains that viewers will be able to move around the online gallery as in a video game, using arrows to turn 360 degrees. Viewers can zoom in on various pieces to learn about the artist and media, and 3-D programming allows examination of sculpted work. Most pieces will be offered for sale.

Creating Without a Budget

The depressed nature of the economy caused by the COVID pandemic makes this year’s Dia de los Muertos festival unique for another reason besides being online. 

“Everyone is donating all their time,” says Vogel, “and we’re doing this without a budget. We’re not asking for sponsorships either.” The creation of La Ofrenda is a good example of what is motivating so many people in the arts.

Enamorado, who co-founded Stay Gallery eight years ago, runs his own marketing and graphic design firm, Estevan Studios. When not working for his business clients, he and Program Director Juliana Canty set aside time for creating the 3-D art gallery featured for Dia de los Muertos.

“Stay [Gallery] for me is a passion project,” he explains. “It is really just a culmination of everything I’ve ever done throughout my career as an artist.” 

When the economic impact of the pandemic became clear, Enamorado says Stay Gallery lost the ability draw income from hosting events, lost contributions for operating expenses, and saw the City of Downey’s rent subsidy cut by almost 75 percent. He and Canty scrambled to apply for COVID relief grants. They were successful, but still need to raise funds that will cover rent for about three months next year.

Enamorado says the meaning and rewards of art in his own life are behind his motivation to keep Stay Gallery operating in some way.

“Since second grade, art was always my number one passion and form of release and finding peace,” he explains, “and I know that there are other kids in the city who seek that same outlet.”

Beyond school activities, Enamorado feels there is not much opportunity for exposure to the arts in Downey.

“My interest,” says Enamorado, “is just providing students the opportunity to come to a space to be able to experience, learn, and share art.” For Enamorado, the online art exhibitions and events are an important way for keeping Stay Gallery relevant until normal public interactions can resume.

People wishing to learn more about the Dia de los Muertos Art Festival on November 1, and some of the artists, can visit the following websites:

http://ddlm.downeytheatre.org
www.stayarts.org
www.diegomarcialrios.com