Community / Interview with Mike Chavez
    Mike Chavez grew up in Watsonville and has lived there most of his life. Mike has a long history working with youth in the area; first coaching baseball for fifteen years and then as a youth counselor with Fenix Services for the past ten years.   He also works with youth at the Watsonville Community School (WCS), an alternative high school for kids who, for different reasons, are in need of special support and services that a mainstream school can not provide.

   Through RUAP, WCS is currently partnering with the Institute for Visual and Public Art (VPA) Digital Mural class.   This collaboration will culminate in a series of posters to be installed in a hallway of the Watsonville Community School.   Students work individually and with the WCS youth to develop images around youth culture and youth issues.
Shannon Harvey, RUAP Community Liaison, interviewed Mike Chavez:
SH: Why is the work you do with the youth at Fenix or the Watsonville Community School important to you, and why did you choose to do it?

MC: "Because I see myself in a lot of these kids, and a lot of these kids are lost. A lot of them are trying to find dreams or they gave up on those dreams already. They think they’re destined to go to jail or die young. You talk to each one of them and you see that they’re losing their dreams, they’re losing their hope. And that’s exactly the way I felt when I was growing up and it’s not that way. And that’s why I try to direct them and give them that hope so that they can believe that they can do it."
SH: Could you say something about the process you observed the youth going through during this project and in what ways has it affected them?
MC: "I think the most important thing is that it makes them realize they better keep their eyes and ears open because opportunity could pass them by that quick. The kids come over here and see the digital pictures and you can’t believe the look in their eyes. And when they go back and tell the other kids all of them want to come. They want to come but sometimes young kids get so sidetracked. "I've been involved in a lot of different projects and RUAP's the best one I've seen.

"RUAP always says 'what do you have to say? What do you want to do? What do you want?'
 Like one girl who was supposed to come today instead went off with her boyfriend. But when she sees these (posters) she’s going to say I should have went.  And Dennis, that’s one kid you can’t even keep in the classroom, he’s always wandering. And if you go over there today to where they’re working on the digital posters you’ll see how focused he is."
SH: What would you have changed within that process if you could have?

MC: "I think if a person wanted to they could always find something to change but I really wouldn’t want to mess with it because that’s what came out of their minds. That’s what they had to say, that’s their message."
SH: How do you imagine that these posters might transform that space, that hallway in the Watsonville Community School?

MC: "It’s going to bring life, life and reality. I think it’s going to offer them hope and it’s going to make them take life more seriously. They’ll see that this is what they created, and they did it in collaboration with other people who care. It shows the kids how to solve problems in a concrete, really positive way. Especially when they see work that they made themselves. I think art is a really strong way of healing people and kids. It helps them to get a lot of their anger out, their hurt, and their pain. To be able to put it on paper or put it into a mural is powerful. To see it appear on paper is kind of magical."

SH: Could you say something about the collaboration that took place between your students and the students at the university? What did your students learn from this encounter? What do you think they taught the university students?

MC: "I think they’ve learned from each other. I think WCS students have learned things about trust. Usually when people come to the WCS the kids don’t know whether to trust them. I’ve seen people come in and do murals in the buildings. They usually get a grant from the city; then, once the project’s over, we don’t see them anymore. But here at the University they’ve been coming back. When the University came in they came in smiling, they came in inquiring they came in there with questions. And they asked them all with respect and that’s the main thing that you come in with, respect. You treated them with honor. If you know the kids real well you see them and you see that there’s respect there. And they relate to that. It’s hard because there are a lot of downs that you see happen at the school and sometimes you don’t get to see the highs. When the digital class here held the images up in the hallways, I saw how it stayed in their eyes, they’re proud. Even I get excited when I see those images; it really picks me up."
SH: What kinds of projects would you like to see happening in the future with RUAP?

MC: "I just want to keep working in the community and working with kids. I’ve never considered myself an artist. But I’m realizing that I can go to other places and I can pick things up and say, "hey you know what that doesn’t look hard at all". I’m in my forties and it’s opened my mind up to art in a new way. I love art and I always did but I was scared of it because I didn’t think I could do it. So I want to continue doing stuff like that and working with youth and speaking out for them. I want to continue to be their voice or teach them to be their own voice because they are the future.

    "I’ve been involved in a lot of different projects and RUAP’s the best one I’ve seen. RUAP always says what do you have to say? What do you want to do? What do you want? I’ve never even been to too many places and right after we started a relationship with RUAP I got a chance to go to New Orleans. That just blew me away. Instead of going to different areas I used to read about them in books. Going to some of the old neighborhoods like the African American neighborhood just blew me away. You go to my office and there’s a lot of strong color in there, there are a lot of different images and a lot of stuff I had in my mind but I didn’t know how to bring it out. I buy little one-dollar shelves at garage sales and give them some paint and they really stand out. Those are things I learned around here. Work with what you’ve got.

     "I really feel comfortable when I come here to the University. People really care, you can feel that. It’s important for me because it’s hard for me to just blend in anywhere. There are places I can be where I grew up and I still feel that, that there’s this wall."
Community / Interview with Mike Chavez

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