10/30/2025
A big shout out to Las/Los Esparza... First Familia of East Los Chicano Art (and the East Side's largest-hearted one at that!), along with an original (first-ever exper) "Calavera" poem inspired by and dedicated to beloved and revered community artist, educator, healer, spiritual elder and honorary madrina, la Gran Maestra Ofelia Esparza in commemoration of her recently inaugurated retrospective at the world class Vincent Price Art Museum, which is situated prominently within the new East LA College Fine Arts complex. "Ofelia Esparza: A Retrospective" explores and assesses the profound impact of her art practice on art in the U.S. as part ofand her unique role within the greater context of Chicano Art itself, and will run through April 18, 2026.
A mother of nine who marched herself back to college to pursue a degree in education once her youngest was enrolled in school, she would go on to become the kind of educator children in East L.A, truly deserved, an art teacher who would inspire and encourage them while helping them unlock and recognize their own creative potential. When she retired from L.A.U.S.D. after 25 years of service at the age of 67, while the world was shifting its focus toward the new millennium, it was to focus on her work as an artist. The voluminous collection comprising 85 works going as far back as 1945 spans over seven decades. The exhibition acknowledges the significance of her internationally heralded work as a Master Altarista as an important aspect of her practice, particularly within the context of how Dia de Los Muetos has come to be understood, observed and celebrated throughout the U.S. today with a parallel consideration of just where and how far her ofrendas have taken her, in addition to the extent of the specific issues she has either chosen to or been asked to address with each ofrenda commission. But curators Sybil Venegas and Joseph Valencia understood the need to examine and address iterations of her oeuvre based on the range of substantive technical and formal concerns and subject matter explorations which comprise a much more deeply considered as well complex art practice To that end I've added a pair of items from the BROOKLYN & BOYLE archives that reflect my own similar, if proportionately much smaller, efforts on her behalf. These began gestating and taking shape, I'm proud to say, one afternoon some seventeen years or so ago during a conversation I was fortunate to have with her over the modest cup of coffee she offered in a cozy house situated directly behind her street-facing family home in East L.A.. A space long since repurposed to serve as her studio, its cozy expanse was, even then, already, bursting--literally--with her drawings, paintings, hand-pulled prints and sculptural work. ¡Que viva la gran Maestra y Artista Integra Doña Ofelia Esparza! http://www.brooklynboyle.com/2019/10/altarista-ofelia-esparza-headed-to.html
