© Melanie Cervantes. Photograph and digital image © Delaware Art Museum. Not for reproduction o…

Self-Help Graphics & Art, Inc

BiographySelf-Help Graphics & Art, Inc is a community arts center in East Los Angeles, California. Self Help was one of the primary centers that incubated the nascent Chicano art movement, and remains important in the Chicano art movement, as well as in the greater Los Angeles community, today. SHG also hosts musical and other performances, and organizes Los Angeles's annual Day of the Dead festivities. Throughout its history, the organization has worked with well-known artists in the Los Angeles area such as Los Four and the East Los Streetscapers, but it has focused primarily on training and giving exposure to young and new artists, many of whom have gone on to national and international prominence.

In 1970, artist and Franciscan nun Karen Boccalero started producing prints in an East Los Angeles garage with Chicano artists Carlos Bueno, Antonio Ibáñez, Frank Hernández, and others. They decided to work together to promote community arts and the work of local artists, to use art as an instrument of social change in the barrio, and to establish a cultural arts center. The artists had their first exhibition the following year at an East Los Angeles shopping center called El Mercado. In 1973, the organization, which until that time went by the name Art Inc., was renamed Self-Help Graphics & Art.

Person TypeInstitution

Terms