Over 35 years of artistic expertise, expression, and activism from Raoul Deal (Teaching Faculty Emeritus, Community Arts) is currently displayed in his expansive exhibition “Continuum 24: Where Everything Begins.”
The exhibition is a career retrospective featuring artwork from his time spent in Mexico and South America to the culture shock of moving his family to Milwaukee, and everywhere in between.
“Where Everything Begins” is divided into five parts that represent different periods of Deal’s life, each section exploring different themes including art and healing, looking inward, and community arts activism.
Several PSOA alums have their work featured in “Where Everything Begins.” Those alumni are:
Nadia Al-Khun (BFA 2022, Community Arts), Isabel Castro (BS 2022, Honors), Jovanny Hernandez Caballero (BFA 2023, Photography & Imaging), Natalie Derr (BFA 2021, Art), Emmanuel Guerra (MFA 2024, Art), Molly Hassler (BFA 2018, Art), Eriks Johnson (MFA 2004, Art), Mutópe J. Johnson (MFA 2014, Art), Chantala Kommanivanh (MA 2012; MFA 2013, Art), Teddy Lepley III (MFA 2023, Art), Madeline Martin (MFA 2019; Arts Integration and Learning Certificate, 2022), Nayfa Naji (BA 2021, Art), Celeste Contreras Skierski (MFA 2022, Art), Gabrielle Tesfaye (BFA 2018, Inter-Arts), and Jeff Zimpel (MFA 2021, Art).
“I was especially honored to include the work of a handful of my former students, who selected beautiful pieces that encompass a variety of different media,” said Deal. “They are powerful statements of community, identity, spirit, and creative self-expression.”
In addition to being the founding coordinator of the Peck School’s Community Arts BA Program, Deal was a long time collaborator with the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies and was Artist-in-Residence for the Cultures and Communities Program for over 20 years. In all capacities, his pedagogy was guided by his own experiences living and working in different communities. He regularly invited students to engage as service learners with individuals and organizations around the city.
The power of collaboration is at the center of “Where Everything Begins.”
Origins in Latin America
Born in the Midwest to a bicultural family, Deal attended first grade in Costa Rica, first learning to read and write in Spanish. Early on in his life, Deal traveled between Mexico and the United States, and after earning a BFA in Painting from the University of Illinois Champaign Urbana, he spent a year traveling abroad throughout South America.
Upon meeting his wife and collaborator Dinorah Márquez Abadiano (MM 2001, Music), he moved to Mexico and placed roots in Veracruz where they had their daughter, Minneapolis-based artist and writer Gabriella Deal-Márquez.
“In the ten years we spent as a family in Mexico, Raoul began to implement spontaneous strategies to support his creativity,” Deal-Márquez reflected in the forward of the exhibition catalog.
During this time, Deal made art centered on Mexican popular culture that explored his growing interest in cultural activism, including themes of sexism, toxic masculinity, and colonialism.
Relocation to Milwaukee
The family moved to America, where Deal worked in the Milwaukee Public School system with children of immigrant families, predominantly from Mexico and Central America.
“I saw how the ‘American dream’ was in full view, but very much out of their reach,” said Deal. “I saw how consumerism propagated unhealthy cultural values among these young students. I saw their fury against an unfair social condition.”
Through this experience, Deal saw the power art had in giving underrepresented youth communities the ability to find their voice and assert their stories.
In the forward, she describes her father as “often lost in thought, taking in his surroundings,” someone who “sees wonder everywhere.”
“What Raoul has learned in community and of himself,” Deal-Márquez says, “has prepared him to further deepen this artmaking process, expand his craft, and to depart once again from where everything begins.”
“Continuum 24: Where Everything Begins” is open in Kenilworth Square East Gallery until Saturday, September 28. For times and more information, visit the PSOA events calendar.
Story by Jason McCullum ’25