When Ofelia Esparza walks into the Vincent Price Art Museum at East Los Angeles College this month, she’ll see something she once only dreamed of: nearly a century of her art filling a gallery just blocks from where she grew up.
At 93, the celebrated Chicana altarista, artist and retired teacher is finally getting her first-ever museum retrospective.
“My dream was to make a huge altar at East LA College,” said Esparza, who honed her drawing and painting skills at the community college. “This is a project beyond anything I’ve ever done. It’s all the stages of my life. It’s emotional, but I’m happy to see my pieces all together.”
Titled “Ofelia Esparza: A Retrospective,” the exhibit opens October 18 and features 90 works of never-before-seen drawings, paintings, printmaking and the altars that shaped how Día de los Muertos is celebrated in the U.S. and beyond.
A legacy rooted in tradition
Esparza’s art journey began at age 5, when she used a nail to carve a picture of a house and tree into the adobe wall of her childhood home in East LA. Her mother, Guadalupe Salazar Aviles known to the family as “Mama Lupe,” started ironing pieces of white butcher paper she saved from the carniceria for Esparza to draw on instead.
“It was my first art piece,” said Esparza. “I see the world through 7-year-old eyes. All my stories, all the things I connect with, the work I do began when I was a child. My mother was a creative spirit. She never called herself an artist, but the neighborhood knew she was.”
Mama Lupe was a strong woman who immigrated to the U.S. after the Mexican Revolution and eventually settled in East LA, where she raised Esparza and made home-cooked meals and handmade crafts. She grew nopales and verdolagas in the yard, made mole from scratch and created crosses and coronas for funerals.
But it was her nacimiento — a handcrafted nativity set — and Las Posadas gatherings in their home that made the biggest mark on Esparza.
She credits this altar making tradition that now runs nine generations deep for inspiring her work as a sixth-generation altarista, artist and educator.
From the classroom to community
After graduating from Garfield High School and raising nine children with her husband, Amado Esparza, she returned to school — first at ELAC, then at Cal State LA, before earning her credential. She became a teacher at City Terrace Elementary School, where she integrated folklórico and Día de los Muertos traditions into her curriculum.
In 1975, everything changed when she stumbled inside the seminal Chicano arts space Self Help Graphics & Art (SHG) and discovered remnants of their first Day of the Dead procession.
“I came home and told my mother and she said, ‘De verás?’” said Esparza. “We had never heard of any local public celebration.”
Esparza began teaching workshops and building public altars at SHG, informed by her cultural roots and Indigenous spirituality. She helped shape a tradition that endures more than 50 years later and has spread internationally — elevating her from teacher and artist to cultural leader.
Now that legacy is being honored in full.
A community of altars
“Ofelia Esparza: A Retrospective” at the Vincent Price Museum (VPAM), was curated by Joseph Valencia and retired Chicano studies professor Sybil Venegas, who for 15 years invited Esparza into her classroom to help make student altars at ELAC. Along with curatorial assistant Gloria Ortega, the team worked closely with Esparza and her family and summoned the community for photos tracing the artist’s evolution.
The show features early drawings from the 1940s, a self-portrait from 1972, whimsical watercolors from the 1990s and decades of politically-charged Self Help Graphics prints, woodcuts, linocuts and monotypes. These works are anchored by seven altars recreated from exhibits at museums like Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian and Chicago’s National Museum of Mexican Art.
“We’re telling a bigger story about what her creativity has been for the last eight decades,” said Valencia. “We’re tracing her origin of learning and embracing the altar practice that lays the foundation for becoming the master altarista she is.”
The first altar that greets visitors is “Recuerdos Que Nunca Mueren,” a recreation of the ofrenda Esparza and her daughter Rosanna Esparza Ahrens created for Lila Down’s 2023 concert at the Segerstrom Center for the Arts. It honors Mama Lupe — her photo is flanked by dozens of bright orange paper cempasúchiles, fruits and vegetables and the molcajate and metate she used to make her famous mole and salsas.
“It’s about creating a sacred space,” said Ahrens, 64, who helps her mom with Self Help Graphics’ annual Noche de Ofrenda community altar that began in the mid 90s and moved to Gloria Molina Grand Park in 2013. “When people are in the presence of an altar, it shifts their attention and energy.”
‘We’re all trying to keep up with her’
Even in her 90s, Esparza continues to make art alongside her daughters, grandchildren and great grandchildren, crediting “lots of naps” for her youthfulness.
“Ofelia keeps us on our toes,” said artist Andrea Ramirez. “We’re all trying to keep up with her.”
In 2013, she co-founded Tonalli Studios, a creative wellness space in East LA that offers Indigenous healing practices, movement and altar making workshops. She also teaches art and writing workshops in prisons through the Alliance for California Traditional Arts.
“It’s always been about community,” said Esparza, who expects 100 family members at her exhibit opening. “I can’t think of myself as isolated as an artist. I have ideas of my own, but they’re always connected to other people.”
“Ofelia Esparza: A Retrospective” will be on view at the Vincent Price Art Museum from October 18, 2025, through April 18, 2026. An opening reception is scheduled for 5 to 8 p.m. on October 18.
Correction, October 10, 2025 1:09 pm: An earlier version of this story misstated the location of Esparza’s childhood home.