Judy Baca

Judith F. Baca is an incredible artist known for her murals involving political landscapes. “The Great Wall of Los Angeles” is Baca’s greatest work. It is 2,700 feet long and is created along a flood control channel in the San Fernando Valley. This immense landscape took Baca seven years to complete, and it displays a variety of different cultural, political, and racial pieces. Baca prefers to put her personal views on top of landscapes.

            Baca is one of the many artists who has helped to bring street art to the surface. She has  founded The Social and Public Art Resource Center, also known as SPARC. This center creates an environment for an artist to express his opinions of social issues, cultural references, and civic dialogues into public art. SPARC is a very successful center that has been involved in the creation of many different artistic works.

            Baca was born in Los Angeles in 1946 to a couple of Mexican Americans. As she grew up Baca got an education and soon learned to speak English. She got into art by trying to get the class that she was teaching to get along and work together. She had her class start a mural on the school wall, and before long the entire class was interested on working on it. Because it was such a big project everyone had to work together, and by the time that it was finished her class knew how to get along. A few years later Baca was fired from her teaching position due to being part of a school protest. The next job that she received was as an art teacher for the Los Angeles Parks and Recreation Department. From there Baca became very involved in painting murals and doing street art.

            Baca’s murals are extremely impressive, especially “The Great Wall of Los Angeles,” which holds the record for being the world’s largest mural. She has changed countless numbers of lives through her artwork and continues to inspire artists from all over the world. Baca's role as an artist is definitely to give form to hidden or universal truths, spiritual forces, and personal feelings; and she does an outstanding job accoplishing her role. Although Baca still is working on her murals, she is also teaching art in the UC schools.   

Here are some links to more information about Judy Baca; as well as the links that I received my information from.

http://www.judybaca.com/now/index.php
http://www.chavez.ucla.edu/jb_bio.html

 Here are some pictures of Baca's "The Great Wall of Los Angeles"

flickriver.com

map.ais.ucla.edu

sparcmurals.org