Judith Baca

I am beginning to believe I am a political landscape painter. I have always known the value of art as a tool for transformation both personal and political. What I have had to learn through being attentive to my own curiosities and artistic focus, is that I choose often to use land as my method of recording memories and stories in my paintings and murals...[Retrieved on 11/14/2017 from: http://www.judybaca.com/artist/page/artist-statement/] I really don’t want to produce artwork that does not have meaning beyond simple decorative values. I want to use public space to create a public voice, and a public consciousness about the presence of people who are, in fact, the majority of the population but who are not represented in any visual way. By telling their stories we are giving voice to the voiceless and visualizing the whole of the American story. [Retrieved on 11/14/2017 from: http://www.judybaca.com/artist/contact/contact-template/]

Baca is a painter and muralist, monument builder, and scholar who have been teaching art in the UC system since 1984. She was the founder of the first City of Los Angeles Mural Program in 1974, which evolved into a community arts organization known as the Social and Public Art Resource Center (SPARC) which was has been creating sites of public memory since 1976. She continues to serve as its artistic director and focuses her creative energy in the UCLA@SPARC Digital/Mural Lab, employing digital technology to create social justice art. Baca’s public arts initiatives reflect the lives and concerns of populations that have been historically disenfranchised, including women, the working poor, youth, the elderly, LGBT and immigrant communities. Throughout Los Angeles and increasingly in national and international venues, Baca’s projects have often been created in impoverished neighborhoods that have been revitalized and energized by the attention these works have brought and the excitement they have generated. Underlying all of Baca and SPARC’S activities is the profound conviction that the voices of disenfranchised communities need to be heard and that the preservation of a vital commons is critical to a healthy civil society. [Retrieved on 11/14/2017 from: http://www.judybaca.com/artist/biography/]