On Monday Evansville Montessori Academy students are busy on various piece s of art for the Saturday El Dia de los Muertos Festival. Two are wearing smocks, painting the dress of a tall paper maché skeleton a deep red.
She’s otherwise painted white and black with hands outstretched. Other students are decorating sugar skulls and shoebox ofrendas.
The Academy is handling decorations for the festival this Saturday.
“This year we're having the full-on festival, whereas last year we tried to abbreviate things a little bit out of concerns for just a political climate that was going on at the time,” said Elementary Teacher Eric Ridenour. Last year the possibility of an Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raid hung over the community.
“We thought it would be tone deaf of us to put it out there when there were people who had worries about that.”
Fiesta Evansville was also cancelled in 2025. But this year the climate is different, and with the input of the Mexican community the whole event is returning on Saturday.
There will be ofrendas, the Art Parade with paper maché skeletons, dancing, food, face painting and more. Of course this takes about a month of preparation.
“We have activity on a lot of different fronts,” Ridenour said. “We're getting our ofrendas finished for the ofrenda room … we add something to our art parade, which happens at the end of the celebration, and the kids are making their sugar skulls that go in their ofrendas, and they take them home …”
Administrator Sarah Spelbring is helping students make sugar skulls, another Day of the Dead staple.
“So we they come in, and I will show them how we mix together the sugar, the meringue powder, and water. And the meringue powder is to keep the form intact. Once it dries out, it will be solid. It acts as a binder,” Spelbring said. “And they're always excited when we take that, lift that form off, and there's the little skull sitting out there underneath there.”
Ridenour isn’t sure how many sugar skulls are eventually eaten at home.
The other festival staple are ofrendas. While a Mexican family’s display might be much larger, in this case, students build small displays in a shoebox containing images or artifacts from a family member who has passed away.
In the case of Xander Lobacz, 9 is celebrating his deceased grandmother. The box is like a diarama with wallpaper, a photo, English tea bag, Scrabble gameboard, TV and a chair.
Ridenour said he hopes students can gain an appreciation for the culture of their neightbors and maybe learn about their own relatives during such an activity.
“I think it's a great time for parents to get together as a family with their kids and talk about the great grandma that they may have never met, or the pet that they had before they were married. It's just a really nice way for family traditions to get passed on, and it's a nice time to come together as a community too.”