The Vincent Price Art Museum (VPAM), in preparation for the upcoming Fall 2025 exhibition Ofelia Esparza: A Retrospective, formally invites community members to contribute images featuring Ofelia Esparza and/or her work. A Chicana artist, altarista (altar maker) and educator from East Los Angeles, Esparza is a sixth-generation altar maker and is recognized for her work with Self Help Graphics & Art (SHG), specifically for her community ofrendas (altars/shrines) for Dia de Los Muertos.

We invite you to share images that showcase the vast and personal impact Esparza and her art have contributed to East Los Angeles and beyond. Emphasis on submissions includes Esparza and Day of the Dead photographs in Los Angeles since the late 1970s, her printmaking years at Self Help Graphics from the 1980s–2000s, or personal photographs with friends and loved ones, but all material content is welcome.

Selected submissions may be displayed in the forthcoming exhibition and/or accompanying publication. Additional details provided on this form.

Ofelia Esparza: A Retrospective celebrates the artistic and cultural contributions of Chicana artist and sixth-generation altarista Ofelia Esparza (1932–). The exhibition unifies and reinterprets Esparza’s varied studio practice and community artmaking, while also emphasizing her enduring role as a central figure in the artistic, cultural, and educational circuits of Los Angeles, California, and the United States since the post-war period.

Opening in the fall of 2025, Ofelia Esparza: A Retrospective is co-curated by VPAM’s Curator of Exhibitions, Joseph Valencia, and art historian and independent curator, Sybil Venegas. This exhibition will recreate several of her most complex and iconic altars produced since the 1980s showcasing them in the gallery alongside other artworks she created from the 1950s to the present.

The Vincent Price Art Museum (VPAM) at East Los Angeles College serves as a unique educational resource for the diverse audiences of the college and the community through the exhibition, interpretation, collection, and preservation of works in all media of the visual arts. VPAM provides an environment to encounter a range of aesthetic expressions that illuminate the depth and diversity of artwork produced by people of the world, both contemporary and past. By presenting thoughtful, innovative, and culturally diverse exhibitions and by organizing cross-disciplinary programs on issues of historical, social, and cultural relevance, VPAM seeks to promote knowledge, inspire creative thinking, and deepen an understanding of and appreciation for the visual arts.

Learn more about VPAM at vpam.org