Every piece seemed to spark a memory in the bearded, Belgrade-born artist. "Look at this one," he urged, scurrying like an animated conductor from one print to another -- "The Pope of Broadway" by Eloy Torres, "Frutas & Verduras" by Frank Romero and "The Dressing Table" by Patssi Valdez.
The work represents "the best example of immigration," said Alferov, whose family left Yugoslavia to escape communism. At Self Help, artists put their own experiences to work in an Anglo environment and created "another language, another way of being expressive."
It was that new expression Boccalero worked to foster at a time when Chicano art was largely unrecognized. Even after the artists she mentored became famous, she remained artistically democratic. At her print shop, the big names got in line next to the nobodys.
"She gave every artist, no matter their proficiency, the same opportunity," Alferov said.
Critics knock Self Help as an outdated product of the Chicano Movement, allegedly stagnated in the art of identity politics. Some younger artists have avoided the place because they chafe at what they consider those aesthetic confines.
But maybe it's the critics who need to open their minds and reconsider their calcified perceptions. Judging from the artwork on display today, the only standard seems to be the variety of styles and themes. Artist Omar Ramirez was one of those young artists who felt Self Help was "not for us." Ideologies aside, he was trained as a painter and muralist, not a silk screener.
But there he was this week, bent over a table at Self Help, signing a fresh set of prints depicting a forbidding urban landscape titled "Luci in the Sky," a piece that suggested its pro-immigrant protest not with slogans but with troubling shadows in a people-less cityscape.
"There's a resurgence in printmaking as an accessible way of getting your work out," said Ramirez, 36. "Not a lot of universities teach that."
Oh, by the way, Ramirez is now one of the newer members of the Self Help board of directors. The place wasn't so forbidding after all. "It took time to get here," he said.
Upstairs in a second-story office, we talked about budgets and the plan to save the organization. Attorney and art collector Armando Duron serves as board president, taking charge in October 2005 as the agency was falling apart.
That summer, Self Help suddenly closed its doors because it couldn't pay its insurance bill. It quickly reopened under community protest, then most of the old board members resigned.
