Student art work by Julio Tellez

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Julio Tellez:

Troubling Images of Gun Violence

There may be nothing surprising about it when a mother praises an artwork or other creation made by her child. In the case of Julio Tellez’s mother Esmeralda though, her son’s drawing for ICHV’s “Student Voices” contest carries an extra poignancy. That’s because it reflects her own upbringing amidst violence in a Chicago community.

Julio, who will be a freshman this fall at Tilden Tech, created a powerful drawing that fuses stories he has been told about his family’s (and, in particular, his mother’s) past with his own imagination and the troubling world of gun violence. In the drawing, a pregnant woman is pregnant with a baby that has a gun attached to it. She is standing on top of a gun that points directly at a terrified teenager. The image also includes a machine that, Julio says, play violent games for kids. And, in the background, two children are watching a TV that is broadcasting some kind of gun violence.

Meanwhile, in the distance, atop a hill, is a stark image of a graveyard.

The drawing is partly based on what Julio knows about his mom’s life. “My mom moved away from a violent neighborhood, where people in her family were joining gangs and doing drugs,” he says. (Neither Julio nor his mother wanted to identify the neighborhood, except to say that it is located in the city). “She decided that she didn’t want her kids to grow up in that environment.” Today, Julio, his mom, his stepfather and eight siblings (three brothers and five sisters) live together in a house in Chicago’s Back of the Yards community.

“When people are raised in the wrong environment, it’s going to lead to someone having a gun,” says Julio, who created his artwork while he was a student at Daley Academy on the south side. His art teacher, Ms. Puentes, encouraged him to participate in the “Student Voices” contest.

Julio says he has not been able to completely avoid violence in his community. He was robbed earlier this summer, and does not know if the robbers had a gun. “I was with my little brother and two friends. I was kind of scared. Still,” he says, “I believe it’s not where you live – it’s how you live.”

Though one reason his mother moved to the Back of the Yards community was to avoid violence, Julio says matter-of-factly that gangs have “shot in front of our house a few times.”

“Gun violence is something I worry about a lot,” he says. “I think that one of the only things that can help kids face it is parents. If parents don’t know where their kids are at 2 in the morning, I’m pretty sure there’s a problem.”

At night, Julio says, we definitely “stay in the house.”

Over the years, Julio’s mother says her guidance to Julio and her other children has, at times, been direct and practical. “I taught my kids early how to duck to the ground,” she says. “I’ve had two-year-olds who know how to drop to the ground. She says the family “hears gunshots at night five times a week.”

Though she moved away from home when she was 18 and still faces the reality of gun violence, Ms. Tellez retains faith in young people, including her son. She says “Julio has always drawn powerful things with a lot of meaning, so his drawings are not a surprise to me.”

She does, however, hope that more people listen to what kids are saying. “More good things about what kids do and say need to come to the public’s attention,” she says. “I see kids who are aware, but they don’t have people backing them up.”