User:Serendipitymarina/Judy Baca

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Judith Francisca Baca (born September 20, 1946) is an artist, activist, and professor of Chicano studies, world arts, and cultures based at the University of California, Los Angeles. She is the co-founder and artistic director of the Social and Public Art Resource Center (SPARC) in Venice, California. Baca is the director of the mural project that created the Great Wall of Los Angeles, which is the largest communal mural project in the world.

Early life
Baca was born in Los Angeles on September 20, 1946 to Mexican American parents. Her mother, Ortencia, worked in a tire factory. She was raised in Watts, Los Angeles (a predominately African-American and Mexican-American neighborhood), in an all-female household composed of her mother, her aunts Riba and Delia, and her grandmother Francisca. Her grandmother was an herbal healer and practiced curanderismo, which profoundly influenced her sense of indigenous Chicano culture.

Baca's mother later married Clarence Ferrari in 1952, and Baca has a half-brother Gary and half-sister Diane. Afterward the three of them moved to Pacoima, Los Angeles. This neighborhood was drastically different from Watts – Mexican-Americans were minorities in Pacoima.