NINTH ANNUAL DIA DE LOS MUERTOS CELEBRATION

Click here to see photos of the exhibit!

Rocking Horse Café, one of the most exciting Mexican restaurants in New York, and owners, Roe Di Bona and Marvin Beck have created and sponsored "El Dia de Los Muertos," The Day of the Dead event in New York City. The fundraiser is now in it's 9th year, lending support to the Chelsea Community and exhibiting emerging artists.

"El Dia de los Muertos" celebrates the memory of loved ones that have gone before us with humor and love. Despite its spooky name and eerie images like sugar skulls and skeleton dolls, the Mexican Day of the Dead is a joyous look at what happens when the door between the spirit world and the physical world opens.

In Mexico on November 2nd, normal activities are suspended. Homes and cemeteries are transformed, taking a new guise and an entire range of meaning. The dead come to life in the memory of the living. Majestic offerings by means of ephemeral, commemorative altars decorated with earth, flowers, candles and colored paper are elaborately assembled. The altar represents how every family remembers their ancestors.

The altars that will be on display at Rocking Horse Café from October 25th to November 19th, have been generously donated by artists as part of a fund raising auction, the proceeds of which benefit Gods Love We Deliver and PS 11. The auction was held on Tuesday night, October 25th, and raised thousands of dollars for the two worthy organizations!

God's Love We Deliver (GLWD), a New York City-based, non-profit, non sectarian organizatoin, is the metropolitan area's leading provider of life-sustaining nutritional support services for people living with HIV/AIDS and other serious illnesses. GLWD serves over 2,000 meals a day throughout the five boroughs of New York City and Hudson County, New Jersey.

"God's Love We Deliver's mission is to improve the health and well-being of men, women and children living with HIV/AIDS and other serious illnesses by alleviating hunger and malnutrition. We prepare and deliver nutritious, high-quality meals to people who, because of their illness, are unable to provide or prepare meals for themselves."

PS 11 is a treasure for Chelsea elementary students, located on West 21st Sreet. The school serves a very diverse group of students and families. With a 70 percent poverty rate among students, the parents and faculty rely on outside fundraisers to help them achieve their goals. Working together, they've turned PS 11 into one of New York's finest public schools.

"The mission of PS 11 is to develop well-balanced children in an environment which is stimulating, diverse, secure, and stable. PS 11 is committed to providing its children with a comprehensive child-centered curriculum which is sensitive to individual children's learning needs and styles. In PS 11, we want children who can deal with the world around them sensitively because they have learned to know and love themselves."

In the spirit of the season, Roe Di Bona and Marvin Beck hope you will join us for a toast and sacred feast in celebration of our dear ones: here or there, near or far.

Click here to see photos of the exhibit! CONTRIBUTING ARTISTS Afolake L. Adedayo Diane Arrieta Gabriela Bertiller Kim Brennan Irma S. Bohorquez-Geisler Naomi Canale Dionision Ceballos Naomi Coby Israel Cruz & Victor Teng Hanah Diab Simone Eisler Edro Soto Fernandez Anne Finkelstein Karen Gentile Susan Hamburger Ray Kinlock KHyal Alex Koh Shirobayashi Kiriko Lisa Krivaka Linda LaBella LAND Yuliya Lanina Beth Livensperger Agnes Martinez Ayanna Jolivet Mccloud Ron Mendez Liliana Mercenario Pomeroy Susan Napack Wilder Oaks Jacqueline Ohnhold Cristian Peña Mario Pessino Richard Pitts Teresa Puig Lyndia Radice Richard Del Rosso Nadim Roberto Sabella Paul Shore Ariel Soto Balam Soto Heather Troy Seonaid Valiant Phillip Ward Elizabeth Warson Rocking Horse Cafe 182 Eighth Avenue (at 19th Street) New York, New York 10011 212.463.9511