Hear from artists Tania Godoroja Pearse, Johanna Poethig, and Kim Martinez from The Great Wall of Los Angeles team as they explore techniques, the artistic process, and collaborative approaches to mural making, furthering the legacy of The Great Wall in conjunction with Painting in the River of Angels: Judy Baca and The Great Wall.
Tania Godoroja Pearse is an art educator and a painter/printmaker living on Mayne Island near Vancouver, Canada. In addition to her degree from the University Of British Columbia, she studied at the St. Ives School of Painting in England, and at Emily Carr University of Art and Design. As an Artist in Residence and as a teacher she gained experience in mural painting and design but it was meeting with Judy Baca, over thirty years ago, and being introduced to a fully collaborative process which influenced Tania and opened up new directions. Subsequently, she has worked in association with SPARC.
Johanna Poethig is a contemporary artist known for her monumentally scaled murals and architecturally integrated public art, socially engaged collaborations, painting, installations and performance. In 2021 she received the California Arts Council Individual Artist Legacy Award. She grew up in the Philippines and has been active in the Filipino-American arts community since the 1980’s. She is Professor Emeritus of Painting and Public Art at the Visual and Public Art Department, California State University, Monterey Bay.
V. Kim Martinez, MFA, Professor of Painting and Drawing at the University of Utah, since 2001. Professor Martinez is an enthusiastic educator and is committed to public engagement through the arts. In 2002, she envisioned a community mural course to provide students real-world experience to create, propose, and implement public art in the form of murals throughout the Salt Lake City area.
Dr. Judith F. Baca has created public art for four decades. In 1974, Baca founded the City of Los Angeles’s first mural program, which produced over 400 murals, employed thousands of local participants, and evolved into an arts organization—the Social and Public Art Resource Center (SPARC). She continues to serve as SPARC’s artistic director while promoting social justice and participatory public arts projects. She is a recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship, the United States Artist Rockefeller Fellowship, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Grant for the expansion of The Great Wall.
Baca makes art shaped by an interactive relationship of history, people, and place. Her public artworks focus on revealing and reconciling peoples’ struggles for their rights and affirming the community’s connections to place. Together, she co-creates “sites of public memory.”
