DÍA DE LOS MUERTOS

Welcoming Back the Dead

Ofrendas guide loved ones home and help the living come to terms with their grief

By KRISTIN FINAN
HOUSTON CHRONICLE

It looked like a craftsy person’s dream. There were hot-glue guns, bright glass beads, pieces of a broken mirror, bags stuffed with ribbons and cloth and paints in all shades with festive names like “pumpkin” and “pretty pink.”  But this was no ordinary arts project. It was art therapy meets Día de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead, a largely Mexican and Mexican-American holiday that celebrates the dead and welcomes them home for the two day period coinciding with All Saints’ Day, today, and All Souls’ Day, Wednesday.  Included in traditional activities is the creation of ofrendas, which family members fill with photos, candles, food and marigolds.  Using the themes of this holiday she grew up with, psychotherapist and art therapist Angelina Rodriguez recently held two altar-building classes to encourage healing through art.

“People tend to not want to face grief, and they look at it as a negative experience, but there are gifts in grieving,” Rodriquez said.  As they created ofrendas in cigar boxes, several shared stories of the people they will remember today.

Check out New Dia de los Muertos 2012 Trip

Just Joe

There wasn’t any gray paint, so Sally Mitchell, who admitted to having “no artistic talent at all,” used a paintbrush to stir globs of black and white on a paper plate. Then she smothered her ofrenda with the color, the same shade her son Joe had used on the 1972 Porsche he was restoring.  “He told me the day before, he said, ‘Mom, life is so perfect.  I just don’t want to do anything to screw it up.’ ”Although Joe was a motorcycle racer and supervised a racetrack, he was going only 30 mph when the Porsche flipped, killing him at age 26.  “When you love being a mom……

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