John: Years ago in my high school days, printmaking was a particular interest of mine.

I did mostly woodcuts, but I had a brief flirtation with silk screen printing, as well.

This was the perfect time to return to it, especially since East Los Angeles was the home of Self Help Graphics, a beacon for L.A.'s printmakers and part of the origin story of California's Chicano movement.

[Mariachi band playing] [Singing in Spanish] I'm John.

Master printmaker Dewey Tafoya was my next teacher.

He and his student Yoli met me in Boyle Heights at Mariachi Plaza, a site bursting with colors and sounds.

[Music continues] Now tell me a little bit about Boyle Heights and what that means to you.

Are you from this area originally?

Dewey: I'm from here.

Growing up around here as a kid, I didn't really know too much about art or artists, but I did have murals, and I think for me that was, like, my art gallery was being able to walk down the street and see murals that depicted culture but history and kind of learning about Cesar Chavez, about civil rights history and social justice history, so I feel like that was a really big influence on just kind of growing up here.

John: Has that had a lot of influence on you?

Yoli: Definitely.

I think, like, especially the Eastside of Los Angeles, it's known for having these murals, like, just behind you, like, looking around.

Yeah.

So I think that definitely inspired me.

John: Tell me where Self Help Graphics fits in with the history of this area.

Dewey: Self Help Graphics was born in Boyle Heights, so it was started in a garage by a Franciscan nun and two queer artists, Carlos Ibanez and Leo Bueno, and they kind of had the idea in the early seventies of just creating a space for folks to come and create art, so their garage turned into a rented building, which eventually turned into, like, a postal truck that would go out and teach people in the community art and then eventually turned into what we have now.

John: Is he a good teacher?

Yoli: Yes, yes.

John: I'm about to find out.

Dewey: Yes.

So the idea is to get you all's creative juices flowing and to create a mashup print, which is basically taking two images and printing them together on one piece of paper.

Just like anything else, the process starts with an idea, and I think, Yoli, you had a really great idea, right?

Yoli: Like, artivism.

Dewey: Artivism.

Yoli: Yeah.

Art and activism.

John: Yes.

Yoli: I think it's just the issues that are worth fighting for in issues that you think affect you and the people around you, so you do something about it, and here, it's make art about it to, like, bring awareness to it.

Yeah.

And also because I am indigenous and, like, a lot of people around me are or, like, we have this whole indigenous community here, so... John: Yeah.

Well, the whole idea is to open rather than close people's minds.

Dewey: The idea of listening, listening to the youth, I think is really important.

John: As an amateur artist, I usually seize on a character.

Just watching those fantastic faces of the mariachi players, does that spark anything in you, Yoli?

Yoli: That sounds cool, and then I was thinking, too, like, with the face, like, maybe it can be made up of other things, like--either, like, motifs or, like, words or, you know, we can incorporate that in there.

Yeah.

John: Great.

This face.

Dewey: It's such a great face.

John: And maybe even getting his fingers on the guitar so that you see that he's singing, and you start riffing on it, too, and let's see what happens, shall we?

Yoli: Sounds good.

John: When Dewey urged Yoli and me to work together on a single image, he was proposing an act of creative collaboration that was becoming a theme of this journey.

Dewey: So once you have your drawing, you're gonna place this over, and you're gonna use either a marker or a china marker, and I feel like this gives you a little bit of texture like crayons.

So once we have our transparency... John: Yeah.

Dewey: we'll create a screen that's coated with a photo emulsion, so it's light sensitive to ultraviolet rays, and then we'll expose this on top of the screen, and after a period of time--I think it's 40 seconds--this will transfer to the screen, and then we have our screen ready to print.

John: You've just covered 60 years of progress.

My time with Dewey and Yoli had been inspiring and eye-opening.

Yoli: I liked what you said about the--like, having his fingers on the strings.

I think you could incorporate that in.

John: And in Yoli, I had gotten to know a young woman wise beyond her years.

In the creative hothouse of Self Help Graphics, she had put to work her youthful commitment to social justice.

She invoked a word I'd never heard before, artivism, expressing the notion that art can be both a reflection and a driver of social change.

Oh, God!

I didn't give myself room for his-- Yoli: And I was sketching out the bow.

John: His bow is the best thing.

Yoli: I think maybe, like the--like, the little motifs and patterns on the, like, rim of the guitar and everything, we could maybe, like, make a frame out of it or-- John: That's a good idea.

Dewey: Coming kind of out and yeah, and it brings them together.

John: Yeah.

Wouldn't that be kind of cool?

Yoli: Yeah.

John: Oh, this is gonna be great.

Dewey: Is there any, like, text you want to add or any other images that you could add?

Yoli: This text.

John: Keep away from her text.

Dewey: OK. John: We even came up with a title for our work that defined the whole project.

"Escucha a otras voces," "Listen to other voices."

Dewey: It's a great message, too.

I think that's something that's needed is lots of listening.

Yoli: Yeah, like, taking a step back.

Dewey: Because you're the present, you're the future.

We're the past.

Wow!

That is an amazing collab.