Biography artist judith baca

Born in , Judith F. (Judy) Baca grew up in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Watts and in Pacoima and attended California State University, Northridge, where she studied art and minored in history and education (BA , MFA ).

She created her first large-scale mural when she was a teacher at the Catholic high school she had attended as an adolescent, and in she worked with at-risk youth in a citywide art project. These early projects integrated defining aspects of Baca's subsequent practice—scale and collaboration—to enable politically and culturally marginalized groups to assert a positive visual presence within the community, and she continues to confront issues of cultural identity, displacement, and exploitation experienced by people of color in her work.

In Baca cofounded the Social and Public Art Resource Center (SPARC) in Venice, California, with the filmmaker and director Donna Deitch (b.

Biography artist judith baca smith

) and the artist and teacher Christina Schlesinger (b. ). In that same year