Self Help Graphics

A nonprofit Chicano arts center in East Los Angeles will get to stay in its landmark location for at least one more year, but it will have to pay rent. Board members of the Self Help Graphics & Art cultural center at 3802 Cesar Chavez Ave. have negotiated what they described as a "favorable lease agreement" with the building's new owner, Piedmont Investment Co., according to a statement Tuesday from Self Help. The agreement calls for Piedmont, which bought the building last year, to upgrade and renovate the building.

Laguna Art Museum curator Bolton Colburn sensed something uniquely vital the moment he entered Self-Help Graphics. The community-based art center in East Los Angeles, born of the tumultuous Chicano rights movement of the 1960s, was founded to nurture the careers of young Latino artists via workshops, exhibitions and free access to professional silk-screen printing facilities.

Mexico's indigenous art was ferociously intense--from its pre-Columbian temples to its heroic revolutionary muralists and satirical popular artists. Mexican American artists inherited this heartfelt engagement with the realities of the spirit but gave it their own twist. The resulting aesthetic is seen in the Laguna Art Museum exhibition "Across the Street: Self-Help Graphics and Chicano Art in Los Angeles."

When last we left our embattled arts activists at Self Help Graphics, they were on the verge of eviction from their longtime headquarters in East L.A. Even some true believers were ready to count out the struggling community-based institution that has been a beacon for Chicano art for almost four decades. But the group is still alive and kicking as it prepares for its biggest event of the year, the Day of the Dead on Nov. 2, with a display of colorful altars, a procession and a concert.

When the topic turned to Self Help Graphics, East L.A.'s revered but perennially struggling cultural center, it seemed as if nobody talked about creating art. For years, the talk had been all about survival -- meager budgets, debilitating debt, mass board resignations and Sisyphean drives for new funds. But there's a feisty, chain-smoking ghost who inhabits the agency's decrepit building on Cesar E. Chavez Avenue and who doesn't get bogged down in the bottom line.

The lights are out in an area of the second floor at Self Help Graphics & Art, East L.A.'s pioneering nonprofit that has been a beacon for Latino artists for more than three decades. During the recent storms, leaks bedeviled the landmark building on Cesar Chavez Avenue, frying electrical circuits and eating away at walls and ceilings from the roof to the first-floor gift store.

Self Help Graphics, an East Los Angeles arts center that has struggled for its life for the last year and recently lost its executive director, has temporarily closed. Leaders of the nonprofit organization say a financial shortfall precipitated the closure and that Self Help will reopen as soon as funding is secured and the administration restructured. "We are optimistic that a number of grants from major funders will be forthcoming," said Oralia Michel, a member of the board of directors.

There will be two Day of the Dead celebrations tonight at Self Help Graphics & Art, the venerated East Los Angeles arts center that abruptly closed last summer amid mounting financial and organizational problems. Inside the fence surrounding the mosaic-covered building, Self Help will hold its traditional Day of the Dead event, with altars, food, a procession and a print made for the occasion by the artist known as Germ.

For many people in East Los Angeles, Self Help Graphics is more than a community arts center, it's an institution. The building on Cesar E. Chavez Avenue, with its distinctive murals, has for years housed a printmaking shop that served as one of the early incubators for the Chicano art movement in California. Many noted artists who launched their careers there remain active, visible members of the community.

Self-Help Graphics' vibrant inks have left a lasting imprint. For 28 years, the acclaimed nonprofit arts center has been a mecca of fine printmaking in East Los Angeles, a nexus of Chicano pride and artistic endeavor. It will share its wealth with the Orange County Center for Contemporary Art in Santa Ana, when the high-energy exhibition "Inspiring Heroes" opens July 7.