User:Jzestrada/sandbox

John "Zender" Estrada Born Juan Daniel Estrada on June 27, 1966 Better known as John Zender Estrada Los Angeles Based Artist.

Biography: Born and raised in East Los Angeles, John Zender Estrada experienced a rich and diverse cultural environment drawing from the strong personalities of the Chicano youth around him. At fifteen he lived in Mexico City where

he gained a love and respect for Los tres grandes, the famous Mexican muralists Diego Rivera, Jose Clemente Orozco and David Alfaro Siqueiros. While still in High School John won several art competitions including an internship to California State University, Los Angeles (Ceramics) and at the Otis Art Institute of Parsons School of Design (fine art and life drawing). Upon graduation from Verdugo Hills High School, John continued his fine arts studies with the Otis Art Institute majoring in Fine Art and Illustration. While attending Otis, John was influenced by the New York art scene, primarily the abstract-graffiti-pop expressionists and the Graffiti Art scene. Actively involved in establishing the Los Angeles style of graffiti art, John was one of the many early pioneers that created the graffiti movement in the early eighties. John recreated himself as Zender (the rising mountain) (johnzender.com)and had his first one- man show at Otis titled "Zender-Neo Expression" in 1988. Deeply committed to making public art Zender producing over 200 murals in community Schools and over 300 murals in Los Angeles and throughout the United States.

As founder of Creative Art Solutions (creativeartsolutions.com)he has devoted many hours nurturing young artists and making a difference in many communities. Zender has separated his public art from his personal paintings, his work has been exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Zero-1 Gallery, Pueblo Gallery, CSDI, ICU Gallery, Crewest, Self Help Graphics and many others. He has had several one man shows and many group shows, exhibiting with Chicano artists, Graffiti artists. His easel paintings have evolved from series to series. Most of his works from his earlier series now reside in private collections. In 1995 his work arrived at a spiritual turning point and began incorporating more intimate and personal ideas concerning spirituality into his artwork. Influenced by Roberto Matta, Kandinsky, Gorky, Lam, Basquiat and the Bible he began calling his painting theory The Process of Change. He was represented by a gallery in Whittier with his Spiritual Abstractions then moved into his "Sum of the Whole" series where he incorporated figures with tattoos to symbolize the fusion of the spiritual with the Soul embodied in culture. In 2017 he moved to Lancaster CA where he devoted fused yet another element to his work the "Body" where he now creates a new and final series he calls "Triunity" the fusion of the Soul, Body and Spirit making mankind complete.