The Chicano Archives

Self-Help Graphics & Art:

Art in the Heart of East Los Angeles

Essay by Kristen Guzman. Edited by Colin Gunckel. 2005.

Chicano Archives series, volume no. 1.

Award-winning!!

ISBN: 978-0-89551-100-3

ISSN: 1557-5934

ASIN: 0895511002

UPC: 9780895511003

October 2005. 142 pp. 8.5x11.

International Latino Book Award for Best Reference Book in English

The award was presented by Latino Literary Now, a non-profit organization supporting literacy and literary excellence within the Latino community, in conjunction with BookExpoAmerica.

Description: For more than three decades, Self Help Graphics & Art has been a national model for community-based art making and art-based community making. Through its innovative printmaking and other programs, Self Help has empowered local artists and reached out to the world beyond East Los Angeles with the vibrancy of Chicano/Latino art.

In the new CSRC book on the organization, historian Kristen Guzmán (a recent UCLA Ph.D. graduate and now an assistant professor of history at Santa Ana College) draws on archival sources and on interviews with artists to compose a historical essay that tells the story of this remarkable organization. The guide to the archives was created and contributed by the California Ethnic and Multicultural Archives (CEMA) at the University of California, Santa Barbara, which houses the Self Help Graphics archives. The book's editor is Colin Gunckel, a doctoral student and CSRC graduate research associate. Part of the “UCLA in LA” initiative, this book comes out of a partnership between the CSRC and CEMA. In addition to the historical essay, the book includes a finding aid to the CEMA archives and a note on strategic partnerships between the public university and community-based arts.

Self Help Graphics & Art has been the leading visual arts center serving the Los Angeles community for the past thirty years.

Contents

Acknowledgments
Collaborators’ Notes
Author’s Preface
Editor’s Preface
List of Illustrations

Art in the Heart of East Los Angeles
Kristen Guzmán

The CSRC Partnership with Self Help Graphics:
A Model for University-Community Collaboration
Chon A. Noriega

Guide to the Self Help Graphics Archives 1960–2003  
Salvador Güereña

 
  Organizational History
  Scope Note
  Series Descriptions
  Oversize
  Container Listings

Appendix A: Slides (1972-1992)
  Assemblage
  Atelier
  Center Activities and Programs
  Drawings
  Graphic Arts
  Installation Art
  Murals
  Paintings
  Photography
  Sculptures

Appendix B: Slides Supplement 1 (1991-2003)
  Assemblage
  Atelier
  Center Activities and Programs
  Graphic Arts
  Installation Art
  Murals
  Paintings

Appendix C: Silk Screen Prints (1983-2003)

 Selected Bibliography
 About the Author and Editor

Acknowledgments

The book is the outgrowth of an ongoing community partnership between the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center and Self Help Graphics & Art, Inc. We are grateful to the artists and staff of Self Help Graphics and especially to Tomás Benitez, its executive director from 1997 to 2005, for their invaluable collaboration.

The California Ethnic and Multicultural Archives (CEMA) at the University of California, Santa Barbara, which houses the Self Help Graphics & Art archives, provided vital contributions to this project. Special thanks to CEMA director Salvador Güereña for his enthusiastic support.

The Center for Community Partnerships at UCLA under the leadership of Vice Chancellor Franklin Gilliam provided generous support for the community partnership with Self Help Graphics and for this publication. The University of California Institute for Mexico and the
United States (UC MEXUS) also provided support for partnership activities. Our thanks to all.

Collaborators’ Notes

Founded in 1970, Self Help Graphics & Art in East Los Angeles remains a national model for both community-based art making and art-based community making. The UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center, founded the same year, continues its own mission of fostering research that makes a difference. We are proud to have an active and ongoing community partnership with Self Help Graphics, and this relationship serves as a cornerstone of our arts projects that put research and archival preservation at the service of both scholars and the community at large. Just as important, we are pleased to collaborate with the California Ethnic and Multicultural Archives at the University of California, Santa Barbara, which serves as the official archive for Self Help Graphics. These partnerships make a crucial contribution to our shared goal of preserving Chicano history. It is our hope that this book, written and edited by young scholars, will encourage others to enter the Chicano archives and expand the scholarly record.
Chon A. Noriega, Director
Chicano Studies Research Center
University of California, Los Angeles

For many years the artists and the work of Self Help Graphics & Art have enriched and broadened our understanding of Chicano art and of the special role it has played within the broader orbit of American art. The materials produced by Self Help Graphics form an important part of our cultural memory that should be kept alive through the synergy of archivists and cultural historians. The California Ethnic and Multicultural Archives (CEMA) has, since 1986, been the official repository for preserving that memory as it is recorded in the archives of Self Help Graphics & Art. CEMA is dedicated to preserving and making accessible primary sources including silk screen prints, slides, photographs, organizational
records, and ephemera that illuminate the history of this organization and its artists. It is hoped that the historical essay and finding aid in this book will lay the groundwork for further analysis, interpretation, and discourse.
Salvador Güereña, Director
California Ethnic and Multicultural Archives
Special Collections Department, University Libraries
University of California, Santa Barbara

When Self Help Graphics & Art was founded and artists were busy creating their work in close rank, the spirit of that time was to disseminate art as broadly as possible and increase the access to the message and vision captured in its imagery. The print multiple answered this need most efficiently and most effectively. Indeed, the work’s value resided in its ability to touch more and more people. Thus, the archive of fine art silkscreen prints is more an accidental legacy than a purposeful endeavor. The end result is no less valuable, giving us the most inclusive documentation of Chicano printmaking. Whether through an image of bold, idealistic neo-nationalism or a more personal narrative, the artists convey a voice from the heart; heretofore rarely heard, but a voice, loud and clear just the same. This collection of over 500 prints puts to rest any doubt that Chicano artists have been part of the fabric of modern U.S. culture during the last part of the twentieth century.
Tomás Benitez
Executive Director, 1997–2005
Self Help Graphics & Art, Inc.