Community / Interview with Brianna Green
    
    Brianna Green
is twelve years old and attends Pacific Grove Middle School.  She has lived in Pacific Grove since second grade and has been involved with the YMCA most of her life.  Her aunt, Cindy Straw, is the teen coordinator for the YMCA.  As part of a series of RUAP supported workshops around the annual Dia de Los Muertos or Day of the Dead ceremony on November 2nd, Brianna participated in a Sugar Skull making workshop at the YMCA.

    Sugar skulls are a traditional craft practice in the Mexican Dia de los Muertos tradition.  She also participated in the Dia de Los Muertos event held at CSUMB by the Institute for Visual and Public Art and RUAP.  We asked Brianna to talk about what it was like to decorate a sugar skull and her experience as a participant in the Day of the Dead ceremony.
Shannon Harvey, RUAP Community Liaison, interviewed Brianna Green:
SH: Had you heard of Day of the Dead before attending the Sugar Skull Workshop?

BG: Actually, no I hadn't but it was kind of cool because when I went back to history class a few days after Day of the Dead I was able to tell my teacher about it. I got extra credit too.
SH: Describe the process of making a sugar skull.
BG: The sugar skulls at first looked like they would be kind of easy, but then actually when I started doing it, it was harder than I thought. It was actually pretty fun because they had the skulls already made with the face. What we did was we decorated them with frosting, and we took the different colors and used them to decorate the skulls however we wanted.  My second one turned out much better than my first one. "I remember they told us it's not about dead and gruesome stuff like that, it's just the spirits of the people you love and people who passed on and stuff. And I think maybe the skulls are in remembrance of the people you like and love who have died. That's what I would think of them as."
I think the hard part was actually deciding what you were going to do and how you were going to do it. It was easier because afterwards Cindy (Straw) brought out toothpicks and we were able to get more detail.
SH: What did you like the most about the workshop?

BG: Probably sharing with my friends that I got to do this cool thing and they didn't. No! (laughing) I liked being proud of it because it was kind of cool. It seemed kind of interesting; you don't get to decorate sugar skulls every day.

SH: What do you think the decorating of sugar skulls has to do with Day of the Dead?

BG: I remember they told us it's not about dead and gruesome stuff like that, it's just the spirits of the people you love and people who passed on and stuff. And I think maybe the skulls are in remembrance of the people you like and love who have died. That's what I would think of them as. She (instructor, Grace Barajas) told us about a tradition where they write their boyfriend or girlfriend's name on the skull's forehead and give it to them or trade it with them.

SH: What was your experience of the Day of the Dead event?

BG: I thought it was really really cool. I thought it was so neat. They had different altars to represent different people. To represent children they had really cool decorations set up on an altar, with candy and little toys, and pictures of children that had died, and behind that the children's favorite objects, like their favorite book. I really liked the altars. I also thought it was really cool that we could actually be a part of it. We got to make ribbons that had the names of our loved ones and maybe a message to them and we got to put them on this wall (The Healing Wall). I just learned a whole bunch from it. I thought it was a really really neat thing. It was kind of cool to watch the dancing; it was totally different from what I'm used to. It kind of reminded me of when I went to Hawaii. The costumes were really interesting and intricate. It looked like it took them a long time to make them. They also had face painting; you could get your face painted like a skull.
SH: What kinds of things did you learn from participating in the workshop and in the Day of the Dead event?

BG: I learned that there's more about death than what you usually think. When you think about death you think about the movies and stuff like that. But after going to that, I think it's kind of like you think of it in a different way. You don't think of it as the same thing anymore. It seemed really interesting to think about how they perceived death to be. And maybe there isn't an end but like a beginning or something like that. The other cool thing about the Day of the Dead was all the candles. It really made an impact; it made it really cool.
SH: What do you like about being part of the YMCA and RUAP?

BG: I've been with the Y for a long time. Since I've been with the teen program, I think this is my first year I've been doing projects with CSUMB. With the YMCA they always did really cool games and stuff like that. But also coming up we're going to be having an arts festival and it's really cool because we've gotten a lot of ideas from the things that we've done with RUAP. And also we're going to do our service learning event with the school, and we're doing the masks that we did with you guys. We're going to go teach the school how to make masks as a community-intertwining event. We've actually been taking RUAP stuff and using it in our every day lives and it's been pretty cool.
Community / Interview with Brianna Green

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