William Estrada grew up in California, Mexico, and Chicago. His teaching and art making practice focus on addressing inequity, migration, historical passivity, and cultural recognition in historically marginalized communities. He documents and engages experiences in public spaces to transform, question, and make connections to established and organic systems through discussion, creation, and amplification of stories through creativity already present. He is currently a faculty member at the UIC School of Art and Art History and a Teaching Artist at Telpochcalli Elementary School. He has worked as an educator with Chicago Arts Partnership in Education, Hyde Park Art Center, SkyArt, Marwen Foundation, Urban Gateways, DePaul University’s College Connect Program, Graffiti Institute, Vermont College of Art and Design, Prison + Neighborhood Art Project, and the School of The Art Institute of Chicago.
William’s art and teaching are a collaborative discourse of existing images, text, and politics that appoints the audience to critically re-examine public and private spaces. As a teacher, artist, and cultural worker he reports, records, reveals, and amplifies experiences you find in academic books, school halls, teacher lounges, kitchen tables, barrios, college campuses, and in the conversations of close friends to engage in radical imagination. William is currently engaging in collaborative work with the Mobilize Creative Collaborative, Chicago ACT Collective, and Justseeds Artists’ Cooperative.
William has presented in various panels regarding community programming, arts integration, and social justice curricula through the Illinois Art Education Association, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois Humanities Council, Smart Museum of Art, the National Guild of Schools in the Arts, National Art Education Association, Teachers for Social Justice San Francisco, Iowa University, Grand View University, Illinois State University, University of Nebraska at Kearney, Nebraska Art Teachers Association, Illinois Arts Alliance, Chicago Cultural Alliance, Gallery 400, Utah State University, and University of New Mexico. William was awarded the 2016 Teaching Artist Community Award from 3Arts Chicago, the Inaugural 2017 Artist in Residence for the Artist as Instigator Residency Program at the National Public Housing Museum, the 2021 National Leadership Award from the National Guild for Community Arts Education, and the Inaugural 2023 Imagine Just Fellow.
Featured Artworks
Screen printing on the street through Mattie Rhodes Center in Kansas City, Missouri.
Taking family portraits through the Hyde Park Art center as part of the Hyde Park Jazz Festival.
Making art through the Mobile Street Art Cart Project in the western suburbs.
Screen printing on handkerchiefs with students at Northwestern University
Painting a protest banner in support of the Chicago Teachers Union through the Mobile Street Art Cart.
Screen printing posters in collaboration with Axis Lab Chicago.
Family Portrait Project Backdrop set up.
Photographing families in Little Village Neighborhood through the Family Portrait Project.
Close up of handmade Puppets as part of the Puppets & Resistencia Project, a collaboration with Jasmin Cardenas.
Handmade Puppets and stage as part of the Puppets & Resistencia Project, a collaboration with Jasmin Cardenas.
William Estrada has crowd-funded a project with 3AP
-
- $5,075 raised of $3,000 goal
- 0 Days 0:00:00 LEFT
As a teaching artist with nearly twenty years of experience working in schools and arts organizations, I am excited to create a “Mobile Street Art Cart” that will bring collaborative, community-relevant artmaking to the streets of Chicago. For the past …
Read more about The Mobile Street Art Cart -
- $5,850 raised of $5,000 goal
- 0 Days 0:00:00 LEFT
As a community artist with more than twenty years of experience working in schools and arts organizations, I am excited to launch an expanded Chicago Neighborhood Family Portrait Project that will provide free family portraits to people in their neighborhood. …
Read more about Chicago Neighborhood Family Portrait Project