The third year of the Wisconsin Conference of Latino Arts and Culture (WCLAC) brought artists from around the Midwest to share their expertise as the annual event aims to inspire future artists.
The Latino Arts Conference was held over two days from May 14-15 at Centro on Madison’s South Side. The conference was started by Latinos Organizing for Understanding and Development (LOUD), which focuses on the advancement of arts and culture across Wisconsin. Multiple experts of the arts spoke on their respective areas of expertise across the two days, as one of the core ideas of the conference is to bring people together and inspire the next generation of artists.
“You have to see somebody do it, and then you sort of think, ‘maybe I can do it,’” said Oscar Mireles, founder of LOUD. “You have to create that little hope.”
Sessions ranged from literature, visual arts, music, grants writing, poetry, an exhibit in Chicago that chronicles the history of Latinos working on railroads in the United States and more.
(Photo by Omar Waheed)
Mireles did something different this year in hosting his own session to speak on his upcoming entry in his anthology series, “I didn’t know there were Latinos in Wisconsin.” He hosted the session with Marlene de la Cruz-Guzman, writer, poet and vice president of diversity, equity, and inclusion at Viterbo University.
While Mireles does not usually speak past opening the conference and introducing speakers, he wanted to highlight ventures into book publishing.
“On the one hand, we don’t need more writers; we need more people who are going to publish writers,” Mireles said. “Part of it, [Cruz-Guzman] said, ‘I need to get my writing public and take on this role, and then she realized it’s a lot of work.”
Part of the session included LOUD’s future plans to break into book publishing. It will create a nonprofit just for publishing, named LOUD Latino Publishing, that will have opportunities for writers in multiple areas to get published.
One of LOUD Latino’s first ventures will be publishing the latest edition of Mireles’ anthology series and re-releasing the others in a box set.
Attendees like Beata Arceo were excited to see a space where Madison’s Latino community can unapologetically stand up for what they believe in and share their stories. Arceo is from Chicago and attended the Latino Arts Conference for the first time this year.
“It’s a dynamic, wonderful community that is growing, that is standing up, that understands its right to be present. They understand how disability is important and inclusion is important,” Arceo said. “They understand their value, they understand the richness of their culture, they are proud of it, and they are happy to share it.”
Arceo believes that events like the conference are more important now than ever in the face of increased attacks on Latino communities.
Other portions of the conference included the annual “Artist of the Year” award. This year‘s award was given to Chele Ramos, a self-taught Madison-based painter whose work is centered on emotion, identity and mental health.
The conference closed out with a gallery after-party at Omega School.
