24" x 36" limited-edition silkscreened poster by Rolando Murillo / San Antonio, TX 

Edition of 35 | Signed and numbered by the artist | Sold unframed

ARTIST'S STATEMENT
I chose to explore this topic because I have first-hand experience with it. Although my high school days are over 25 years in the past, I clearly remember the issues we dealt with. The school-to-prison pipeline is old, and well engineered. It works too well.

I’m a product of Edgewood ISD. More specifically, I'm a product of Westside San Antonio’s Memorial High School. La Memorial! In 1990, only a few of 500 made it — 180 of us graduated, some didn’t survive, and most dropped out. And many, too many, graduated to prison.

The bad news was too common. Discovering that someone from high school was arrested or sent to prison was disappointing, but it wasn’t a shock. It was nearly a surprise. It was nearly normal.

We could see the system that worked against us. Education was the solution, but we were caught in the Machine. Most of us fought against it, and some of us made it, but none of us escaped it unscathed. Our futures were shaped by it. Some of us have no future to speak of.

Hopefully, we can shut it down soon because it’s still at work. Over 25 years later, my story is not an old one.

Rolando Murillo has been designing professionally for over 20 years. He’s designed for a wide variety of nonprofits, clients and industries. Rolando (aka “Roland”) learned the ropes at notable firms such as RBMM in Dallas and later operated his own successful branding practice for nearly 10 years. His work has been recognized by such industry leaders as Communication Arts, AIGA, the American Advertising Federation, PRINT, Graphis, New York’s Art Directors Club, and The Dallas Society of Visual Communicators. He is a native of San Antonio, where he resides with his wife and daughter.