Abstract: This dissertation examines how the creation of a unique grassroots art center, Self Help Graphics and Art, Inc., played a vital role in the development of Chicana/o art, and contributed to the arts discourse of the community of East Los Angeles between 1972 and 2004. The uniqueness is a synergetic result of organizing artists' workshops and supporting interactivity to creating a protean barrio institution, which served as a catalyst for visual arts in an economically under-resourced urban area. It is clear that the founder of Self Help, Sister Karen Boccalero (1933-1997), who was also the Executive Director, and her collaborators and associates put an indelible stamp on this cultural institution. The center engaged in promoting education about and pride in Mexican and Chicana/o culture. Through the ateliers, youth programs, and annual Day of the Dead celebration, Self Help reflected and recreated many facets of Chicana/o aesthetics and the struggle for social justice. The history of this organization and the artists who became a part of it is investigated using oral histories, archival papers, local newspapers, and the artwork itself. Self Help Graphics became the premier center for serigraphy in Los Angeles and one of the most well known and respected Chicana/o art centers in the United States. Over the past three decades, dozens of prominent artists began their careers there. Self Help Graphics provided dozens of artists with opportunities to hone their technical skills and the chance to exhibit and sell their work, whereas many mainstream art galleries and museums had denied them this opportunity. The role that Self Help Graphics plays in Los Angeles's cultural and artistic life is a stellar model for how art institutions should approach a city of such stunning diversity. For decades now, the definition of Chicana/o art has been changing, taking on a diverse group of artists as allies and collaborators---Latina/o immigrants, Blacks, Asians, Queers---and topics and aesthetic styles. The cultural formations that reflect transnational aesthetics, popular/street culture, disjuncture, dissonance, and synthesis demand that we re-assess our own notions of the Chicano art movement.