As Manager of Off-Site School Programs at the DMA, my job is to develop programming that brings the Museum into the classroom. This includes our long-standing Go van Gogh programs and our Middle School Outreach Pilot, a multi-session partnership program with L.V. Stockard Middle School and W.E. Greiner Exploratory Arts Academy.
Drawing inspiration from the DMA’s exhibition For a Dreamer of Houses, earlier this year students in our Middle School Outreach Pilot were asked to explore the concept of home through poetry, which they would later interpret through sculpture. While recent circumstances prevented students from completing their sculptures, their writing—which describes the spaces, people, feelings, sounds, tastes, and dreams that constitute home—gives us a collection of stories that tell us all we need to know.
Below, I’ve compiled lines written by students into one collaborative poem that tells a complex, expansive, conflicting, beautiful, honest, and hopeful account of what home means to youth in Dallas. I’ve paired their writing with images of works of art completed by students who participated in our Go van Gogh program A City of My Own, which is rooted in similar themes. Here, students were prompted to create cityscapes representative of their definition of Dallas—the landmarks, buildings, and places that make it their own.
During this time, when home can feel like a place we have to be, these students’ writing and works of art remind me of the beauty in all that something like home is and can be.
Home is when I’m with the people I love
Home is a place I feel loved
Home is where I feel safe
Home is when I’m with my family
Home is somewhere filled with laughter
Home is where I can be accepted and be myself
Home is the memory of friends, family, and vecinas jugando loteria los domingos
Home is the feeling you get when you eat raspas on a hot summer day
Home is the sound of the Spanish language everywhere
Home is hearing the radio play norteñas
Home is the color of happiness, calm like gray
Home wouldn’t be the same without Saturday cleaning and loud music
Home wouldn’t be the same without hearing dogs barking in the middle of the night
Home wouldn’t feel the same without my grandma and my grandpa
Home wouldn’t be the same without my mom
Home feels like el canto de los pájaros
Home feels like warmth
Home feels like love
Home sounds like thirty kids talking all at once
Home sounds like my mom singing everyday
Home sounds like a bunch of laughter when my tios, tias, and cousins come over
Home sounds like musica mexicana every morning
Home sounds like people always being up at two in the morning looking for something to eat
Home tastes like comida recien hecha
Home tastes like frijoles, caldo, and maruchan, and sometimes my mom attempting to be a baker
Home tastes like eggs and bacon and pan dulce
Home tastes like sopes, flautas, tacos, macheteadas
Home tastes like carne asada every saturday
Home tastes like tamales, barbacoa, birria, menudo, and donuts on sundays
Home tastes like enchiladas todos los sabados, y un restaurante los domingos
On the outside, home is a house made out of peach bricks and two strong trees
On the outside, home is amigas y vecinas jugando and chismeando
On the outside, people say that it is just a building
But on the inside, it feels very special to you
On the inside of home, I feel protected from anything
I dream of a home with my parents and sibling always by my side
I dream of a home that is big and can fit my whole family
I dream of a two-story home, brand new, and never broken
I dream of a home that is loud, warm, and funny
I dream of a home that is my own
I dream of a home that will never change
Bernardo Velez Rico is the Manager of Off-Site School Programs at the DMA.
