Ahead of the Dr. Martin Luther King March and Celebration on Monday and only days before the 17-day Dreamweek begins, the City of San Antonio named a winner in its poster art contest.
The Department of Arts and Culture’s Krystal Jones explained that "every year, our department partners with the Dr. Martin Luther King Junior Commission to launch a student art contest,” Jones said. “And so we had students from all around San Antonio submit artworks. And we just announced a winner at the Carver Community Cultural Arts Center: Alexa Villanueva [for] her artwork, My Today, Our Tomorrow, is the winner of this year's celebration.”
The 15 year-old from Cole High School was selected from among 82 entries, and she said the honor was overwhelming.
“Just absolutely thrilled and very gracious. She is a student at Robert G. Cole High School, and she really wanted to honor her art teacher, which is the person who told her about the contest,” Jones said. “She's an aspiring artist and just really excited — she'll be going to a Spurs game as a part of winning this contest, and she'll see her artwork all throughout the commemoration.”
Jones said students are given fairly free rein over the content of their artwork.
“The instructions that they're given is that their artwork will be the official poster of the commemoration. And T-shirts will be made with this image and this artwork,” she said. “And so really, we try to leave the parameters open as much as possible for our young artists to be as creative as they can.”
Jones said she felt the artwork's composition and its content were uplifting. “It has this beautiful sunrise behind the San Antonio skyline, but the skyline looks like it's walking forward,” she said. “There's a lot of individuals' legs coming out of the bottom of the skyline to really represent the city moving forward.”
The yearly march often draws about 300,000 participants. “We've heard from the MLK Commission that it is the largest in the nation because San Antonio is a city that really comes together and works together," Jones said. “I think that it really speaks to San Antonio to say that we do have this largest march.”
The march is scheduled to begin at 10 a.m. on Monday, Jan. 15. It begins at Martin Luther King Park, heads west and then ends with a post-march celebration at Pittman-Sullivan Park.
March lineup begins as early as 9 a.m. Dress warmly — forecasters warned of very cold weather gripping the region on Monday morning.
Participants can access free VIA bus service to the march from 8 to 10 a.m. at the Freeman Coliseum and St. Phillip's College. Return service from the park to original pickup locations will last from 12 to 3 p.m.
Dreamweek
The march is the biggest of many events during San Antonio’s Dreamweek, which kicks off on Friday, Jan. 12. It’s 17 days of creating human interaction through civic engagement and embracing ideas for the common good.
Shokare Nakpodia, the founder of Dreamweek, said the theme this year is about a commitment for compassion.
“The theme is 'the compassion drive' we want to encourage as many individuals and organizations as possible to do a lot more to reach our goals in terms of taking care of our neighbors and taking care of our community,” Nakpodia explained.
Dreamweek will offer more than 200 events, including blood drives, discussions on anti-racism, science symposiums, and the Mayor’s Dream Ball event. More information is at Dreamweek.org.
Joey Palacios, Brian Kirkpatrick, Steve Short and Lauren Terrazas contributed to this report.
