Erick Ledesma Selected Work
2017- Clay Masks
A workshop on basic clay skills offered at Journey House in the Clarke Square Neighborhood to youth 8-12 years old from the Longfellow Middle School.
2017 Iron Board Café
The Iron Board Café was created as a pop-up food space to share coffee, snacks, and warm meals in areas of Puerto Rico that were recovering from the aftermath of Hurricane Maria. It served as a contact point with communities to assess their immediate voids so we could work towards filling those gaps. Ledesma, along with their friends and family, were able to connect with 13 communities, served over 1,000 dishes, 2,000+ cups of coffee and were able to distribute portable solar panels, solar lighting devices, and water filters.
2017 One Dream, One Team
Journey House has a partnership and tournament with the Felix Mantilla Baseball Little League from Isabela, Puerto Rico. During the summer of 2017, the young Puerto Rican players traveled to Milwaukee for their tournament. Part of their visit included an art session organized and led by artists Julio Cordova and Erick Ledesma to create a mobile mural that intertwined locations, cultures, and baseball.
2018 Bus Art Project
The Bus Art Project is a collaboration between Local Artists, The County Executive's Office, and Milwaukee County Transit System to activate bus shelters with public art all around town. Ledesma’s piece is located at the intersection of North and Humboldt in the Riverwest Neighborhood.
2018 Common Thread Sculpture
A sculptural piece installed in the Milwaukee Public Library, Mitchell Street Branch that was created as part of Ledesma’s Artists-in-Residence program through a collaboration between Artists Working in Education, Listening to Mitchell, and the National Endowment of the Arts. Community members, who breathed life into the library, drew their own portraits in the blind contour style and were then created into a sculpture made in iron and plexiglass.
2018 Iron Board Café WI
A version of the Iron Board Café was implemented at the Milwaukee Public Library, Mitchell Street Branch in their Studio M (MarkerSpace) during their artistic residency. Each week, during the summer of 2018, the families and youth that came through the studio were given a prompt to create a piece of art--masks, zines, etc. Ledesma would cook a Puerto Rican dish that was then exchanged with the community artists for their art. It served as a cross-cultural exchange with teachings on the value of art, dedication and investment of their time.
2018 Mascaras de Mitchell
Paper maché is a material used around the world to create diverse culturally relevant art. This art build brought together three artists, from different cultural backgrounds, to lead a workshop on creating pieces made out of Paper Maché. Ledesma co-created Cabezudos, a character with an oversized head used in festivals and other folkloric events in Puerto Rico.
2018 RW24 Community Mural
The Riverwest 24 is a community event that consists of a 24 hour bike ride. Along the route there’s different checkpoints and activities in which the bikers can engage during their ride. Ledesma, with two other organizers, curated a space for the bikers to paint a mural as part of a bonus checkpoint. They hired a local artist, Yessica Jimenez aka. Xeroine, to create a design that was then projected onto wood panels and painted throughout a period of time during the race. This piece now lives in the Cream City Hostel.
2018 Si Se Puede Mural
During their artist-in-residency on Cesar Chavez Drive in the Clarke Square Neighborhood, Ledesma created this mural in collaboration with youth, families and neighbors and with the support of the Clarke Square Neighborhood Initiative and El Rey Groceries.
2018 Sticker Mural
In an exploration of home, culture and personal history this piece was created by a group of 8 interns at the Milwaukee Public Library, Mitchell Street Branch. Each participant created a visual representation of their definitions of home, culture or personal history that were then printed on vinyl and installed on garage doors in the library’s Studio M (MarkerSpace) This workshop was led by Ledesma during their residency over the course of 4 weeks.
2019 LBWN x AWE Community Mural Alley Project
The Layton Boulevard West Neighbors in collaboration with Artists Working in Education paired homeowners with local artists to paint murals on their garage doors. The sketch process was a collaboration between the artists and the families to curate their desired visions. The final product is an alleyway gallery of landscapes and an exhibition of local talent.
2019 Palante Mural
This mural is an homage to many things Puerto Rico--its voice, its people, its resiliency. The departure point is the poem Puertorican Obituary by Pedro Pietri, its color selection is from a Bad Bunny video Estamos Bien and the text/message of Palante, meaning moving forward, comes from the Young Lords newspaper. Dressing the Woodland Pattern Book Center in Riverwest, Milwaukee, it was painted with a team of young interns and several community members.
2019 RW24 Community Mural
The Riverwest 24 is a community event that consists of a 24 hour bike ride. Along the route there’s different checkpoints and activities in which the bikers can engage during their ride. Ledesma, with two other organizers, curated a space for the bikers to paint a mural as part of a bonus checkpoint. They hired a local artist, Tania Espinoza, to create a design that was then projected onto wood panels and painted throughout a period of time during the race. This piece now lives at Black Husky Brewing.
2020 Activity Books
At the beginning of the Covid pandemic, when everything halted, so did our community interactions. Gathering Place By The Water are virtual activity books that convene three Milwaukee artists and their offerings to keep a connected city. Each artist has the freedom to create any activity that is based on their practice to share with our community--coloring pages, recipes, exercises, etc. They can be accessed at the Woodland Pattern Book Center's website.
2020 Feathers of Ashé
Feathers of Ashé is a mural located inside the Milwaukee County Courthouse. It is based on the symbolism of the feather, within the Yoruba and Afro-Caribbean beliefs, which represents the full power of the cosmic energy known as Ashé--a philosophical concept through which we can conceive the power to make things happen and produce change and a component of the life force breathed into each living creature. It means "May it manifest!"