Judy Baca

The artist that I enjoyed from the presentations last week was Judy Baca. I have known about her and her work for a bit (and that knowledge was extended through an internship I had with SPARC), so it was great to hear about all the great work she’s engaged in with the community being shared with the class. I know others have talked about her most famous work The Great Wall, but I want to also emphasize the community action that was behind that mural. Judy Baca created a program (funded by the city) that employed youth from marginalized groups that were reclaiming their history in the mural to work on the mural. She has continued centering the youth in her work through SPARC’s digital mural lab. I know that this was a class she used to teach here at UCLA, but she retired and it is no longer available, but she has continued to use the technology at the digital mural lab in collaboration with communities of color (both young and old) to create murals. Two of the murals she has created with the help of the community are Seeing Through Others Eyes and Tiny Ripples of Hope, centered around Cesar Chavez and Robert F. Kennedy and displayed at LAUSD Robert F. Kennedy Community of Schools K-12. These murals are a combination of digital art and painting, which I think is really amazing and shows us that different art forms and mediums can be combined to realize the vision of the artist and the community.