West Orange Arts Center, October 11, 2025 – The West Orange Arts Council welcomed community members to a deeply meaningful celebration: Dia de los Muertos, embodied through an Art Bus and Ofrenda Workshop held at their Valley Road location. Artists, families, neighbors, and curious passersby came together to create, remember, and connect in a space that balanced playful art making with contemplative ritual.
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The Ofrenda Exploration and Contemplation
Mac McParland and Judyann Affronti worked together to host a presentation about Dia de los Muertos as part of our Hispanic Heritage Month celebrations. Also at the Arts Center, workshop leader Judyann Affronti, a WOAC artist, guided participants through the traditions and symbolism of Día de los Muertos: why marigolds are used, how offerings (ofrendas) are organized, and how personal mementos transform into visual tributes. Attendees contributed photos, handwritten notes, candles, small trinkets, and artwork to a shared altar area. Each person’s act of placing something felt like a gentle ritual, a moment of bridging memory and art.
Mac McParland started with a visual slide presentation about the origin and evolution of Dia de Muertos celebrations. Dia de los Muertos is not “Mexican Halloween”. It is a time to remember our departed friends and relatives, and reflect on the influence they had on our family and the community. This holiday started as a pre-columbian indigenous harvest festival, and has been influenced by the arrival of the Spanish and the Catholic Church, various social and political agendas, artists, and tourism. Mac shared photos and videos of Dia de los Muertos celebrations in Oaxaca de Juarez, Mexico and displayed decorations created by local artisans. He encouraged people to consider celebrating Dia de los Muertos in their home, as a way to share family stories and history with younger generations.
After his presentation, Judyann Affronti brought the participants into the front room of the gallery, where she demonstrated how to assemble a typical Dia de los Muertos ofrenda, a display welcoming departed souls back into your home. She started with a table organized into three levels. At the top she added a flower arch. The arch represents the cycle of life from birth to death. It also represents the gateway from the afterlife to our world. Pictures of departed relatives and friends and religious images were added to the top level, representing the afterlife. The middle level included items that were important to the departed, such as cigarettes, playing cards, and favorite candies. This level represents the invitation to return to earth. The first level included items representing the living world – fruit, vegetables, salt, water and bread. The ofrenda was further decorated with marigolds, candles, alebrijes (carved fantasy animals), sugar skulls, and playful skeletons.
Once the ofrenda was complete, Judyann and Mac invited our guests to add pictures of their own departed family members. The event concluded by having everyone share a happy memory of their departed relatives, bring us together closer as a community.
One touching moment: a visitor with a framed photograph paused before placing it on the altar. She whispered the name of her grandmother, then stepped back, tears in her eyes. I watched as she collected herself and then turned to smile at a neighbor who nodded in recognition.
Another moment that still resonates: a child, a bit shy at first, took a paintbrush, hesitated, then began coloring a sugar skull design. At the end, she proudly set it beside her mother’s piece, as though saying, “I made this for someone I miss.”
The Art Bus Participation
The bus itself became a participatory studio. Visitors could paint panels, write dedications, or sketch ancestral images that would become part of the collective display. The mobility and openness of the bus encouraged spontaneous participation — individuals who might not have planned on creating were drawn in by curiosity.
The Art Bus rolls into West Orange for the very first time. Created in 2023 by Crudo Creates, also known as Domingo Cruz, a Washington Heights-raised, South Bronx-based artist, the Art Bus is a repurposed and painted school bus, born from a mission to bring creativity directly to children who may otherwise lose access to the arts. More than just a mobile studio, the Art Bus delivers hands-on art workshops, literacy support, and cultural storytelling to communities across New York City. Its purpose is simple but profound: to ensure that kids, especially those without after-school programs, still have access to imagination, creativity, and self-expression. This stop in West Orange is co-sponsored by the Read Up! Book Club, offering families an unforgettable experience that blends art, education, and community.
Through this exhibition and its programming, WOAC celebrates the rich traditions, creativity, and cultural contributions of Hispanic and Latinx communities, while bringing neighbors together to share in the joy of art.
For more than a decade, the West Orange Arts Center has served as a creative hub for our town, contributed to the revitalization of the Valley neighborhood, elevated property values, and demonstrated that the arts are a valuable economic engine. Our community arts center has built cultural bridges by fostering hope, connection, and creativity throughout our town and local community.
The West Orange Arts Council is actively seeking community champions to help sustain and grow the arts in West Orange. Opportunities are available for businesses, organizations, and individual donors to support the West Orange Arts Center, sponsor programs, underwrite operations, or make a transformational gift.
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The West Orange Arts Council’s mission is to cultivate, inspire, and support the arts in West Orange. Area artists and community leaders remain the core of this all-volunteer organization that operates the West Orange Arts Center Gallery and Gift Shop at 551 Valley Road, West Orange, NJ. For more info visit www.woarts.org, www.facebook.com/woac.org or contact us.