graffiti muralist

As Director of Digital Studio and Education Outreach at the California Museum of Photography in Riverside CA, I led a team of volunteers and interns in developing projects and community exhibitions to engage youth and families — with a goal of centering their experiences in the museum. In 2010, I reached out to artist Guillermo Bejarano to lead a teen group in the production of large scale digital murals using photos and iconography from their neighborhoods.

Bejarano guided students through Chicano culture and the history of murals and freeway art of the 1970s in Los Angeles. They also took road trips to gallery spaces where street art and artists were featured. Upon completion of the murals in Adobe Photoshop, the group traveled to SPARC Graphics in Venice CA where the works were printed — and were able to meet the famed muralist, Judy Baca, founder of SPARC. The digital mural project later received a microgrant from the Zero 1 Foundation allowing us to travel to the O1SJ Festival in San Jose, where the works were exhibited in the Tech Museum, alongside 19 other youth projects from across the U.S. and internationally.