Professor honored for work

  Photo courtesy of SPARC Renowned muralist and UCLA
Professor Judith F. Baca was named "Educator of
the Year" at the Hispanic Heritage Awards Saturday. She explained
that teaching through art is a powerful way of educating
others.

By Michaele Turnage
Daily Bruin Senior Staff

The Hispanic Heritage Awards Foundation named UCLA Professor
Judith F. Baca Educator of the Year Saturday, commemorating her
lifelong dedication to showing others how to discover and convey
the untold histories of oppressed people through murals.

“(This award is) a wonderful acknowledgement for the arts
because the arts are a significant way of educating,” Baca
said in a phone interview from Washington, D.C., after the awards
ceremony, which will be televised on NBC Sept. 22.

The award celebrates Hispanic Heritage Month and, according to
the Social and Public Art Resource Center, seeks to promote greater
understanding of the contributions of Hispanic America.

  EDWARD LIN/Daily Bruin Senior Staff Professor Judith Baca
headed the creation of "The Great Wall of Los Angeles," named a Los
Angeles monument. The half-mile long work chronicles the history of
California’s ethnic communities. It was completed in 1984, after
five summers of work by 700 people. Baca, who has been called a
“one-woman mural magnate” by the Los Angeles Times, has
made educating others through the arts a way of life. She serves as
the vice-chair of the César Chávez Center for Chicana/o
Studies and is a professor of world arts and cultures.

Since making her first contribution to the more than 80-year-old
Mexican tradition of muralizing in 1969, Baca has involved
thousands in the creation of murals.

Among her students are first-graders, college students, Barrio
residents, those who live in affluent neighborhoods, juvenile
offenders, scholars, artists and historians from many walks of
life.

  EDWARD LIN/Daily Bruin Senior Staff "Development of
Suburbia" is part of "The Great Wall of Los Angeles," the longest
mural in the world.

Though she is best known for the Great Wall of Los Angeles
““ a half-mile mural named by the Guiness Book of World
Records as the longest artwork in existence ““ Baca’s
work adorns many parts of Los Angeles and can be seen at the
National Museum of American Art at the Smithsonian, with one mural
currently traveling the world.

“The biggest impact (her work) has had has been giving
voice to previously silenced communities,” said Rachel
Estrella, a UCLA doctoral student who worked as Baca’s
teaching assistant last school year.

  EDWARD LIN/Daily Bruin Senior Staff This section of "The
Great Wall of Los Angeles" depicts the Civil Rights struggles of
the 1940s and 1950s. Baca’s art has captured the historical
experiences of marginalized people all over ““ from the mural
created through collaboration between Israelis and Palestinians to
the one where gang members agreed to a truce to work with her on a
project.

“She fundamentally creates an atmosphere of trust, and she
really works on creating a safe space,” Estrella said.

“Judy really makes a space for the students’ voices,
and she puts the students’ voices first and foremost,”
she added.

Baca, who placed couches in the UCLA César Chávez
Digital Mural Lab to make the site of last year’s class more
inviting, is known to bring coffee to students deep in
concentration.

“There was sort of a rhythm going on between her and the
students and this kind of mutual respect,” Estrella said.

  EDWARD LIN/Daily Bruin Senior Staff This is just one of
hundreds of murals Judith Baca has been involved with.

Baca’s students conduct archival research, interview
community members, collect photos from family picture books, and
consult historians and scholars before envisioning a mural.

“I’ve learned that imagination and dreaming is the
beginning step in any kind of change. If you can’t imagine
it, it doesn’t happen,” Baca said, noting that if she
weren’t a muralist and professor, she would be a poet.

She said that art is a powerful educational tool because
students must use their imagination and become intimately involved
with their project, forcing the student in the end to take
possession of the knowledge and to change because of the
experience.

Creators of the murals also solicit the public’s input.
Most recently, they have used the Internet as a means to showcase
up and coming art and to ask for feedback.

“Judy just insists on the importance of serving the
community as part of the educational custom,” Estrella said.
“She really embodies the kind of work that she espouses or
tries to teach.”

Baca said she would like to divide her time between writing and
working in the studio on her craft. She would also like to produce
two books ““ an autobiographical piece and a guide for those
who seek to do meaningful work in the community.

“Her time has come,” said Toney Dixon, Baca’s
administrative assistant at SPARC. “She is a woman of great
virtue ““ she sees into the soul of what she is
doing.”

For additional photos of Baca’s work, visit the Daily
Bruin at dailybruin.ucla.edu.