Altarista Ofelia Esparza heads to Washington D.C. this year to create a Día de Los Muertos ofrenda honoring her indigenous ancestry for the Smithsonian Museum of the American Indian. Image: L.A. Museum of Natural History  By Abel M. Salas Although she will blush and shudder with nervous embarrassment to hear it said, or read aloud from these pages, Doña Ofelia Esparza is clearly on her way to becoming synonymous with the ofrenda. Literally an “offering,” the ofrenda, or “altar” is a spiritually-based expression of reverence or love traditionally assembled to honor the lives of departed loved ones. Today, however, it is just as likely to represent an idea or a political message. In the course of a quiet and unassuming second-act career as a fine artist over the last 30-years, Ofelia has earned a pristine reputation as one of the nation’s preeminent altar-makers. Widely acknowledged as a leading exponent and master practitioner of a cultural tradition she was first made awar...

Clement Hanami, Goonsquad Garage , 2016 By Pancho Lipschitz What happens when a Japanese American kid grows up in East L.A. in the ’70s? It sounds like the set-up for sit com on the El Rey network but it’s really the story of Clement Hanami’s life. We sat down for beers in Little Tokyo to talk about his journey from East L.A. to UCLA, coming home again to design the art for the East L.A. Civic Center Metro station and how he learned about the true meaning of art by being a roadie for Los Illegals. PL: Did you always think of yourself as an artist? CH: My father was a photographer and my mother was a seamstress but they both dabbled in artistic things. My dad was a poet on the weekends. He would do this thing called senryu. It’s like a haiku but haiku deals with nature and senryu deals with ironies in life. Like a Seinfeld episode. My mother used to paint. So I grew up in a house that was very creative. Do you remember when you started to take art seriously? Growing up Asia...