2020 Distinguished Resident: Irene Oliver-Lewis (2025)

Irene Oliver-Lewisoften appears readyto leap from her chair as she tells stories about her childhood in the Mesquite district of Las Cruces.

A storyteller for most of her life, her personal stories are inhabited by friends, past loves and relatives with back stories of their own. Stories dwell within other stories, interwoven with the rich cultural history of her neighborhood and her town.

"She is fiercely proud of her Hispanic heritage," Kathleen Albers, the former director of the Doña Ana Arts Council said, "and wherever she goes, she shines, but she's also very aware of bringing that voice."

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Irene, 71, lives in an adobe house her family built generations ago. Overhead are the canopies of trees planted by her grandmother. A casita at one corner of the property marks the spot where her father, a skilled wood furniture carver, liked to work outdoors.

On a property known as the Fitch-Oliver Compound, the home was declared “a building of significance worthy of preservation” by the Doña Ana Historical Society in 2002 and has been included in local historical tours.

Throughout a career as a teaching artist and theatrical producer, whichbrought her to classrooms and stages around the world, Irene's Spanish-speaking ancestors and her hometown remained prominent in her art — right down to this neighborhood where Hispanic and indigenous legacies were interwoven.

2020 Distinguished Resident: Irene Oliver-Lewis (2)

"It's like it was in my body. It was in my essence and it just always come out," she recalled during an interview in her back yard. "Anywhere I went … I said was from Las Cruces, Nuevo México."

Besides expressing herself, Irene used her creative energy to help others find their voices through the arts, telling their own stories and honoring their own roots.

Over the last 25 years, she helped convert the old Court Junior High School near Pioneer Women's Park into a home for youth-centered arts. In 2004 the Court Youth Center became the home of the art-centered Alma d'Arte Charter High School, founded by Irene.She also assisted in establishing a charter elementary school integrating local indigenous culture, promoting Las Cruces as a base for a burgeoning film industry and helping to establishthe city's arts and cultural district.

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For her contributions to the arts and humanities locally and statewide, the Las Cruces Sun-News names Irene Oliver-Lewis as its 2020 Distinguished Resident, an annual recognition of those whose work has made a significant impact in the community.

She is the sixth Las Crucen selected for the honor since its inception in 2015.

'My existence was this neighborhood'

"In our neighborhood, you didn't have grass. You had dirt," she recalled. "My grandmother would come out and water her dirt. …The only time you saw green grass was when you were on the other side of Alameda— all the gringos had green grass."

Irene Oliver was born in Las Cruces in 1949, which happened to be the city's centennial year. A facsimile of the original town plat is affixed to the family home on EastKansas Avenue, near the original town site.

2020 Distinguished Resident: Irene Oliver-Lewis (3)

Her recollections of childhood are intertwined with the story of her city and the Mesquite district in particular.

"My existence was this neighborhood," she said, an existence that included walks to the old Holy Cross Catholic School on Main Street, window shopping around J.C. Penney and Merry Go Round or the multitude ofHispanic-owned businesses along Church Street.

Her parents, Cecilia and Fred, ran a store for a while called the Topsy Turvey on East Lohman Avenue, where Lujan’s Bakery is located today. Irene's aunt operated a grocery store at Lohman and San Pedro Street. Most of thecommunity's needs could be obtained within walking distance— even underwear.

Irene's peers were descended from Mexican families or from the Piro/Manso/Tiwa tribe based in nearby Tortugas. There were also Black families on and around Mesquite Street. Children of all heritages mixed together at area schools.

Her first experience of feeling like an "other" came in eighth grade, when she briefly lived in southern California. Her father landed a lucrative job making cabinets for high-end homes, and brought the family to the Los Angeles suburb of Downey.At school, Irene got her first taste of racism when students started addressing her as "Irene the bean."

Irene laughed as she recalled Sylvia, her oldersister, explaining the ethnic slur: "'They're calling you a beaner because we eat beans,'" to whichthe young Irene replied: "Well, we do!"

2020 Distinguished Resident: Irene Oliver-Lewis (4)

Three years in Downey was more than enough for Cecilia, who packed the car and told her husband, in a voice Irene mimics with glee, that he was welcome to stay in California if he liked living there.

Instead, Fred got into the car and the family returned to New Mexico.

Irene enrolled as a junior at Madonna High School, an all-female college preparatory school in the Mesilla Park neighborhood. It was here that she discovered acting.

Beginning the path of theater

"We did theater there all the time," recalled Ellen Dowling, who was a senior at Madonna when Irene arrived. "We were all girls, but that didn't stop us from doing classical theater. We took it very seriously."

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2020 Distinguished Resident: Irene Oliver-Lewis (5)

The two continued doing theater together at New Mexico State University and on community stagessuch as the Fountain Theatrein Mesilla.

"She was always absolutely brilliant," Dowling said, despite the fact that Irene struggled with dyslexia, a reading disability that made auditions and script readings difficult."Once she memorized the lines, she was just phenomenal in anything she did. It just kind of blew you away."

Irene had won a scholarship to NMSU for her acting, and she credited professor Hershel Zohn with providing a solid foundation in traditional theatrical literature and staging.

At the same time, a younger professor and theater artist named Mark Medoff instigated more experimental approaches and plays that confronted the Vietnam war and other social issues.Irene played a lead role in Medoff's play, "When You Comin' Back, Red Ryder?" which became Medoff's first off-Broadway hit in New York City. (Medoff went on to fame as the writer of "Children of a Lesser God" yet continued living and teaching in Las Cruces.)

2020 Distinguished Resident: Irene Oliver-Lewis (6)

And in her freshman year, she discovered the work of Chicano theater artist Luis Valdezand El Teatro Camposino, a company Valdez founded which presented one-act plays, or actos, performed by farm workers.

A visit by Valdez to the campus that year "left an imprint in my mind," she said, which would influence her own creative work.

She met her husband, Charles Lewis, at NMSU though the two were wed just three years. While she has kept "Lewis" as part of her name and the two remain friends today, she said, "I never really wanted to be married. I tried, I really tried."

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After completingher undergraduate degree in theater and journalism, Irene obtained in 1978 a master's degree in speech communication with a focus on reader's theater, a technique for building reading fluency and presenting written works in dramatic form.

Not long after this, Ireneleft home to explore a professional career in theater, a journey that would take her to New York, Europe and Asia before she found her way back to Las Cruces.

Integrating art and education

"When I was little, I didn't go outside much to play with the kids," she recalled. "I stayed in my mother's kitchen with my mother's sisters and my grandmother and all the old folks. It was Spanish most of the time: It was chisme— you know, gossip— and mentiras (tall tales), stuff like that."

2020 Distinguished Resident: Irene Oliver-Lewis (7)

Reader's theater and oral storytelling shaped her creative vision, and in Albuquerque she gained experience and knowhow as a producer and director.

She joinedLa Compañia de Teatro de Alburquerque, a bilingual ensemble based in a storefront theater in theNob Hill neighborhood near the University of New Mexico. The company toured extensively and, following an appearance at the 1984 Festival Latino at the Public Theater in New York, the group accepted an invitation to present at the Edinburgh International Festival in Scotland.

Everywhere they went, Irene said they met "all sorts of people that were hungry to do their art in their language and in their culture."

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After leaving the company she found herself in demand as a producer of theatrical shows and other artisticevents focusing on New Mexico's history and cultural diversity.

Several grant-funded residencies followed, bringing her to classrooms in Japan, South Korea, Mexicoand U.S. cities, along with a stint in the Albuquerque Public Schools developing theater education at Longfellow Elementary School. The school had recently organized itself as an arts magnet.

With what she learned in managing events, instruction, producing multimedia shows and education administration, Irene Oliver-Lewis finally made her way home to Las Cruces after 15 years.

'They knew they were there to be artists'

Soon after she returned, Las Cruces Mayor Ruben Smith involved Irene in cleaning the site of the old Court Junior High School on WestCourt Avenue, near downtown.

2020 Distinguished Resident: Irene Oliver-Lewis (8)

Smith aimed at establishing a youth center at the site, and in 1995 Irene took on a leading role in renovating the facility with an auditorium, dance studio, gallery and art studios.

The Court Youth Center employed teaching artists and educators as the program grew, serving children of all ages. The center hostedcommunity programs, winning recognition from the New Mexico Alliance for Arts Education.Besides the performing arts, there was instruction in ceramics, folk art, culinary arts, music and literature.

With adult artists supervising, children produced public art installations that are still standing, such as the tiled mural at the Jardín de Mesquite at Tornillo Street and Spruce Drive.

In 2004, the Court center became the base of Alma d'Arte Charter High School, which Irene founded as a public school committed to arts integration.

"There were a lot of kids who had trouble in school, had different needs, so it was attracting them," she recalled. "I had them come with a portfolio. …They knew they were there to be artists. Their interest was to discover themselves as a creative person, as a giving person, as an empathetic person, as a person who understands differences."

Although she did not serve as the school's principal, a position requiring a license from the state Public Education Department, Irene was on hand as the school's founder and artistic director to nurture self-expression and promote the school's vision.

2020 Distinguished Resident: Irene Oliver-Lewis (9)

"Beauty will create beauty," she said. "I truly believe that and have always believed it."

Albers, whose daughter was among Alma's first students, said Irene promoted and defended that vision "ferociously." She added that the education her daughter received at Alma was transformative.

Since formally retiring from the school in 2014, Irene has stayed busy enough that it is hard to gather a comprehensive list of local initiativesin which she has taken part.

Albers said Irene was a critical guide for the arts council's New Mexico Heritage performance series and numerous art exhibitions celebrating Hispanic traditions,"making sure that we were really representing that culture properly."

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She was also a consultant on the plan for Las Cruces' arts and cultural district, a development project that received an accoladeearly this year from the Creative Tourism Network in Barcelona, Spain.

She has also organized and led historical tours, raised her voice as an advocate for funding movie industry facilities in the region, and promoted the art of the ofrenda (home altar) in observance of Día de los Muertos.

She also assisted local organizers in writing the charter establishing theRaíces del Saber Xinachtli Community School in Las Cruces. The elementary school opened its doorsin 2019.

"I have started a lot of things," she said, "and they live on beyond me."

2020 Distinguished Resident: Irene Oliver-Lewis (10)

'The only deadline I have now is myself'

With her 72nd birthday approaching, Irene Oliver-Lewis and her sister, Sylvia Camuñez, have treated 2020, the year of the COVID-19 pandemic, as a "time of reflection," she said.

The sisters are renovating their single-story adobe home to serve as a community gallery and arts studio named "Las Muchachas," which Irene hopes will include a commercial kitchen for culinary arts instruction, and a recording studio where community members can record their stories and compile an oral history.

Once planned to open this fall, Irene said the pandemic has forced her to slow downand reflect, exploring arts and crafts while beginning to organize all of the documents and artifacts of her life's work.

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She has also been honing her one-woman show, "Cecilia-isms: Dichos de mi Madre," based on sayings (dichos) and family stories she relatesin the guise ofher mother. Irene premiered the play in Albuquerque in 2002, and performed a revised version at the Rio Grande Theatre in Las Cruces in 2016.

"Dichos are our cultural DNA," Irene says in a line from theplay. "Just like making tortillas."

Enjoying a cool December afternoon, Irene Oliver-Lewis shows no sign of fatigue as she impersonatesone figure from her life after another, occasionally sipping water through a straw while wearing a mask.

2020 Distinguished Resident: Irene Oliver-Lewis (11)

She hopes "Las Muchachas" will involve some of the young artists and students she has mentored, deepening their roots in the community and leavingtraces for later generations to remember.

Yet, having pushed hard on so many projects in the past, today she indicated patience for letting this new resource grow at the pace of a tree.

"The only deadline I have now is myself," she said — a dicho of her very own.

Algernon D'Ammassa can be reached at 575-541-5451,adammassa@lcsun-news.comor @AlgernonWrites on Twitter.

Read about our previous Distinguished Residents:

  • 2019: J. Paul Taylor
  • 2018: Frances Williams
  • 2017: Ricardo Ramírez
  • 2016: Heather Pollard
  • 2015: Robert Brack
2020 Distinguished Resident: Irene Oliver-Lewis (2025)
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