Self-Help Graphics & Art
Self-Help Graphics & Art, Inc. is a community arts center in East Los Angeles, California, USA. Formed during the cultural renaissance that accompanied the Chicano Movement, Self Help, as it is sometimes called, 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 pri marily on training and giving exposure to young and new artists, many of whom have gone on to national and international prominence.
In 1970, the 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 1972, the organization, which until that time went by the name Art Inc., was renamed Self Help Graphics & Art when it found a home in a suite on the third floor of an office building at 2111 Brooklyn Avenue in Boyle Heights. The 2,000 square-foot (186 m2) space was financed by Order of the Sisters of St. Francis, who donated $10,000. The following year, the space was expanded to 9,000 square feet (836 m2) with a grant from the Campaign for Human Development.
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