Elsa Flores

Elsa Flores (born 1955 in Las Vegas, Nevada) is a well known Chicana street artist. Her mother's pronounce was Maria Valenzuela and she was originally from a small village called San Javier located in Sinaloa, Mexico. She is one of the best known members of the Chicano street art movement.

Elsa Flores demonstrated interest in arts from a categorically young age. She grew up on Los Angeles' east side, where Chicanos comprise a large percentage of the state's population. While a high school student, Flores standard a scholarship to attend the Idyllwild School of Music and the Arts. She next studied photography at California State University Los Angeles and afterwards enrolled at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, where she focused upon her drafting skills. While at the Art Center, she taught art and music education at Plaza de la Raza with artist Carlos Almaraz and Louie Pérez and David Hidalgo of Los Lobos. Flores occasionally performed in Los Lobos, as competently as in the punk band The Knuckleheads formed later Pérez and Hildago. The latter band mixed electronic instruments in the appearance of the accordion, violin and flute.

Flores began to get recognition for her paintings, which have been exhibited a propos the world, during the 1970s. She met Carlos Almaraz in 1974, a fellow Chicano who was allocation of the yet to be Chicano street art movement. Almaraz was a supporter of the famed Los Four player collective. Elsa Flores and Carlos Almaraz eventually married in 1981, and the two collaborated on one of the most famed Chicano murals, the California Dreamscape. While Almaraz was already an icon in the midst of Chicanos because of his murals across California (as allocation of Los Four and as a solo artist), "California Dreamscape" helped Flores become an icon herself among Chicano artists. The 15' x 70' California Dreamscape mural was commissioned by the California Arts Council and is exhibited at the Reagan State Building on 3rd and Spring Street in downtown Los Angeles.

In the celebratory year leading stirring to the Los Angeles bicentennial, Flores, Pérez and supplementary artists collaborated to complicate the celebrations. Together next Pérez, Flores produced a multimedia business at Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, which took place on September 5, 1980. Electric guitar, recordings played on tape recorders, and participants yelling at the audience were features of the event. In a related action, she photographed Pérez as "Screwy Louie" carrying a outraged through the Second Street Tunnel.

Carlos Almaraz was diagnosed past AIDS during the 1980s, eventually leading to his death. After his death, Flores' fame continued to grow. Her paintings have been shown, to indispensable acclaim,^{[citation needed]} in museums and art houses in places such as Hawaii, New York City and Mexico. She has had solo exhibitions in New Mexico and in Los Angeles.^{[citation needed]} Many of her additional exhibitions have been work exhibitions where her paintings have been showcased alongside those of other famous artists.^{[citation needed]}