Joe "Peps" Galarza is a Chicano artist, educator, and musician based in Los Angeles. He is the bassist for the Chicano rap group Aztlan Underground. [1]
Joe "Peps" Galarza is a Chicano artist, educator, and musician based in Los Angeles. He is the bassist for the Chicano rap group Aztlan Underground. [1]
Joe Galarza was raised in the El Sereno neighborhood on the east side of Los Angeles. Growing up in an economically-disadvantaged largely Latino community, he was exposed to a lot of gang violence, crime, and drug abuse. [2] As a result, he became an educator for at-risk youth, and teaches art at correctional facilities and community centers. [3] In 2008, he led a mural workshop with high school students on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation for their Death to Meth campaign. [4] He collaborated with Tongva Native elder, Julia Bognay, to create murals on the Pitzer College campus to acknowledge indigenous land and stories. [5] He has worked with the Ventura County Arts Council to lead mural workshops for the elementary schools and for their Art & Youth justice program. [6] [7] In 2016, Galarza along with artist Jose Baltazar, created one of the 31 angel statues for the California Community Foundation’s 100 years of service to Los Angeles County public art display. [8] Galarza has also taught art at University of Redlands, Pitzer College, and Self-Help Graphics. Along with artist and scholar Marisol L. Torres, he formed the art collective Arte Toltecaytol. [9] He is a multi-disciplinary artist who creates paintings, murals, sculptures, music, and musical instruments. Galarza is best known for being a member of the award-winning Chicano rap band, Aztlan Underground which has toured internationally and has opened for large acts such as Rage Against the Machine. [2]
ArteToltecaytol is an artist collective founded by Joe Galarza and Marisol L. Torres. [9] The collective has created murals and led arts workshops throughout southern California. They were commissioned by Academia Semillas del Pueblo Xinaxcalmecac, an Indigenous Mexican public charter school in East Los Angeles, to create a mural program for the school titled, “Tonacayotl” which means "fruits of the land/sustenance" and features various Indigenous gods. [10]
Genetic Wind Songs is a solo online exhibition and performance space created by Joe Galarza to showcase the negative effects of colonization in the Americas including erosion of Indian American culture and death to the people. [11] In November 2020, Joe Galarza performed as Genetic Wind Songs of Truth and Revolt at Rio Hondo College in East Los Angeles. [12]
2019 Channel Islands University Mural at University Hall - Lead artist for Michele Serros Mural [13]
2019 Redlands University Mural for Think Indian Program - Lead artist/muralist in collaboration with Desert Sage [14]
2019 Camp Rocky Juvenile Hall - Lead Artist for Mural with Boyle Heights Arts Conservatory [15]
2018 Self-Help Graphics - Lead Artist For 100 Year Anniversary of LA Philharmonic/Ciclavia and Day of The Dead ceremony [3]
2018 Camp Rockey Juvenile Detention Center Mural with AIYN/ Armory Center for the Arts [16]
2018 Barry J. Nidorf Juvenile Hall - Compound Mural - Lead Artist with youth serving life sentence
2017 Pitzer College Mural - Lead muralist [17]
1998 Monte Vista Elementary School Mural - "Tonantzin" in collaboration with Daniel Cervantes and Ozomatli [18]
2019 Homeboy Industries - Inter-generational trauma informed art workshop [19]
2016 Camp Scott - Juvenile Detention Center mural workshop [20]
2014 Youth Action Party and Mendocino County Youth Project Muralist Instructor for Native Pomo youth project [21]
2012 Migrant Education Program, 1st Street Elementary School Art & Drawing Instructor
The Great Wall of Los Angeles is a 1978 mural designed by Judith Baca and executed with the help of over 400 community youth and artists coordinated by the Social and Public Art Resource Center (SPARC). The mural, on the concrete sides of the Tujunga Wash in the San Fernando Valley was Baca's first mural and SPARC's first public art project. Under the official title of The History of California, it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2017.
The Royal Chicano Air Force (RCAF) is a Sacramento, California-based art collective, founded in 1970 by Ricardo Favela, José Montoya and Esteban Villa. It was one of the "most important collective artist groups" in the Chicano art movement in California during the 1970s and the 1980s and continues to be influential into the 21st century.
Carlos D. Almaraz was a Mexican-American artist and a pioneer of the Chicano art movement. He was one of the founder of the Centro de Arte Público (1977–1979), a Chicano/Chicana arts organization in Highland Park, Los Angeles.
The Centro Cultural de la Raza is a non-profit organization with the specific mission to create, preserve, promote and educate about Chicano, Mexicano, Native American and Latino art and culture. It is located in Balboa Park in San Diego, California.The cultural center supports and encourages the creative expression “of the indigenous cultures of the Americas.” It is currently a member of the American Alliance of Museums.
Precita Eyes Muralists Association is a community-based non-profit muralist and arts education group located in the Bernal Heights neighborhood of San Francisco, California. It was founded in 1977 by Susan and Luis Cervantes.
Judith Francisca Baca is an American artist, activist, and professor of Chicano studies, world arts, and cultures based at the University of California, Los Angeles. She is the co-founder and artistic director of the Social and Public Art Resource Center (SPARC) in Venice, California. Baca is the director of the mural project that created the Great Wall of Los Angeles, which is the largest communal mural project in the world.
East Los Streetscapers Public Art Studios is a muralist art collective and fine art studio based in East Los Angeles, California. Its members have executed over twenty murals and large-scale public artworks, primarily in the Los Angeles area.
Pablo Esteban O'Higgins was an American-Mexican artist, muralist and illustrator.
Judithe Hernández is an American artist and educator, she is known as a muralist, pastel artist, and painter. She a pioneer of the Chicano art movement and a former member of the art collective Los Four. She is based in Los Angeles, California and previously lived in Chicago.
The Chicano Art Movement represents groundbreaking movements by Mexican-American artists to establish a unique artistic identity in the United States. Much of the art and the artists creating Chicano Art were heavily influenced by Chicano Movement which began in the 1960s.
Willie Herrón III is an American Chicano muralist, performance artist and commercial artist.
Victor Ochoa is an activist, painter, graphic designer and master muralist. He has painted over 100 murals, many of them in San Diego, California. He is considered one of the pioneers of San Diego's Chicano art movement. Ochoa was one of the original activists at Chicano Park and a co-founder of Centro Cultural de la Raza in Balboa Park, both in San Diego. He helped establish the influential Border Art Workshop/Taller de Arte Fronteriza (BAW/TAF). Ochoa is also a teacher of art and Chicano heritage. His work has been shown nationally and internationally, including at the Venice Bi-Annual, at the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego and in the groundbreaking exhibition, Chicano Art: Resistance and Affirmation (CARA). In addition to creating his own work, he is also a master of art preservation techniques, especially relating to murals. He is considered to be a "serious cultural resource in the border region.
Patricia Rodriguez is a prominent Chicana artist and educator. Rodriguez grew up in Marfa, Texas and moved to San Francisco to later pursue an art degree at Merritt College and this is where she learned about the Mexican American Liberation Art Front (MALA-F) and the Chicano Movement. In 1970, Patricia received a scholarship to the San Francisco Art Institute and this is where she met Graciela Carrillo. Together, they created and founded the Mujeres Muralistas, the first Chicana women's mural collective in San Francisco.
Susan Kelk Cervantes is an American artist who has been at the epicenter of the San Francisco mural movement and the co-founder and executive director of the community-based non-profit, Precita Eyes Muralists.
Fabian Debora is a Chicano artist based out of East Los Angeles known for paintings that capture the immigrant and gang experiences in Los Angeles. His works include graffiti, murals, sketches, and fine art paintings.
Margaret Garcia is a Chicana muralist, educator, and arts-advocate based in Los Angeles.
Martha Ramirez-Oropeza is a muralist, painter, theater performer, and researcher known for her work on the pre-Hispanic Nahuatl culture.
Graciela Carrillo is a Chicana artist and muralist in San Francisco and member of the all-female Chicana/Latina artist group Mujeres Muralistas. She is a co-founder of Galería de la Raza, a gallery utilized to showcase the everyday lives of the Chicano community through art during the Chicano Civil Rights movement through the Chicano muralist movement.
Julia Louise Gaitan Bogany was an American community leader. She was an educator, and cultural consultant, who identified as being Tongva.