Photo by Steven St. JohnTribune

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Buddhist monks, aided by Working Classroom Executive Director Nan Elsasser (right) and students, build an altar in honor of those recently killed during political strife in Myanmar. The event took place Friday in Downtown Albuquerque. Working Classroom, an alternative arts program, is having a reception this Friday to mark Day of the Dead celebrations.

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The kids of Working Classroom are thinking big this year as they mark the Day of the Dead.

For the members of Downtown's alternative arts program, the annual holiday is more than just an excuse to play with skeletons and set up altars.

This year the students are tackling three major themes:

• A week ago they set up a storefront exhibit on Eighth Street between Silver and Gold avenues to honor the memory of those killed in the recent political crackdown in Myanmar. Chanting Buddhist monks attended an opening ceremony Friday.

• A satellite D¡as de los Muertos exhibit is being set up in Puebla, Mexico, southeast of Mexico City. It is devoted to journalists who have been killed in Mexico.

• At the Downtown Visiones Gallery, students on Friday will unveil their tribute to animals killed for food, fashion and sport. The exhibit runs three weeks.

Nan Elsasser, Working Classroom's executive director, said the children voted this year to make a statement about man's treatment of the world's four-legged inhabitants.

"It's dedicated to animals who have died due to human greed," she said.

Art pieces touch on cosmetics testing, the fashion business and the meat industry. A nearly life-size horse with glass legs represents the fragility of animals used for big-money sports, Elsasser said.

"It's really about abuse and not making the distinction between what's necessary and what's for our pleasure just because we want it," she said.

Elsasser said the message might be strong but the images have an artistic flair.

"Even though the point they're trying to make is gross, it's all very fabulous," she said.

"There's all these highly colored animals. It's really cool; much better than if they wanted to gross you out."

Guest curator is Albuquerque sculptor Isaac Alarid Pease.

Elsasser said Working Classroom, an after-school program that encourages diversity and social action, is in the middle of an expansion, both in Albuquerque and in Mexico.

The storefront gallery Downtown next to Flying Star is a three-year project in a space donated by the building's owner. Soon, Elsasser said, the space will be lit round the clock. It will only be visible from the street.

And later this month Working Classroom plans to begin its move to new digs in the Barelas neighborhood. Elsasser expects to open the facility at 423 Atlantic S.W. by March.

And then there is the project in Puebla, Mexico.

Staffer Francisco Guevara has been in Mexico the past month with Albuquerque student Michael Lopez setting up the outpost. They are working on a pilot project aimed at an ongoing sister program.

Elsasser and a few others headed there earlier this week to unveil the Day of the Dead exhibit with 18 Mexican students and three artists.

She says it's perhaps more than a little ironic to bring the Day of the Dead back to the people who invented it.

"It's a little scary to take someone else's holiday and reintroduce it to them in a whole different way," Elsasser said. "But apparently it's going really well."

She said she is impressed with the students' choice of honoring slain journalists. She said it shows a refreshing acknowledgement of the meaning of freedom from poor kids in Mexico.

"The whole mess in Iraq has made people cynical about other people wanting democracy," Elsasser said. ". . . That the most important thing to (Mexican students) is that reporters are allowed to tell the truth about their country - that's extraordinary to me."