Self Help Graphics at Fifty

The definitive history of a cherished East Los Angeles institution over five decades of art making and community building.
 
Self Help Graphics at Fifty celebrates the ongoing legacy of an institution that has had profound aesthetic, economic, and political impact on the formation of Chicanx and Latinx art in the United States.
 
Officially launched in 1973 during the Chicano Movement, Self Help Graphics & Art continues to serve on the cultural front. The institution’s commitment to art, dignity for all, and empowerment of Chicanx and Latinx artists appears in every aspect of programming, including the Día de los Muertos festival; the Barrio Mobile Art Studio, which brings art education to underserved schools; and the printmaking program, which offers an accessible medium infused with activist aims. Looking at the multiple genealogies of art that intersect in East Los Angeles, Self Help Graphics at Fifty bears witness to the organization’s influential role in US and global art histories.

Contents

Introduction
Intangible Registers: Self Help Graphics and the Creation of Sustainable Art Ecologies
Karen Mary Davalos and Tatiana Reinoza

PART ONE: THE ETHOS OF SELF HELP GRAPHICS & ART

1. Dibujando el Camino: Ibañez y Bueno and the Chicano-Mexican Public Art Tradition
    JV Decemvirale
2. The Barrio Mobile Art Studio: The History of an Art Education Program for Chicanas/os 
    and Mexican Immigrants in Los Angeles
    Adriana Katzew
3. Generative Networks and Local Circuits: Self Help Graphics and the Visual Politics of 
    Solidarity
    Mary Thomas

PART TWO: THE ATELIER

4. The Future Is Feminist: How the Maestras Atelier Transformed Self Help Graphics
    Claudia Zapata
5. Unfinished: The Death Worlds of Homombre LA
    Robb Hernández
6. Self Help Graphics & Art’s Contributions to Chicana/o/x Art Histories 
    Karen Mary Davalos

PART THREE: FROM EAST LOS ANGELES TO THE WORLD

7. Central America at Self Help Graphics: Camaraderie and Artmaking in the City of Angels
    Kency Cornejo
8. Self Help Graphics and Global Circuits of Art in the 1990s
    Olga U. Herrera
9. Creating Infrastructures of Value: Self Help Graphics and the Art Market—a Conversation
    with Arlene Dávila
    Arlene Dávila, Karen Mary Davalos, and Tatiana Reinoza

Atelier History
Self Help Graphics & Art Timeline
Further Reading
List of Contributors
Index