Leading with a Culture of Health and Healing, Executive Director Betty Avila Bids Farewell to Self Help Graphics in 2023
By: Betty Avila
It has been a dream to be at the helm of Self Help Graphics & Art. I remember walking into Galeria Otra Vez at Self Help for the first time and experiencing an affirmation that told me I was home. Here I was in a place of cultural significance, one that reflected me and my community on its walls in a way that no other museum or gallery ever has since. Assuming the position of Associate Director in 2015, I felt an overwhelming sense of responsibility. The weight of stewarding this legacy Chicano cultural organization was/is heavy. My body knew this even then.
Since then, I am so very proud of our growth: SHG’s staff has tripled, the budget has quadrupled, the building mortgage has been paid, the renovation of the site is in the works— a kind of stability and thriving that this community gem has both needed and long-deserved, and one to which so many people before me have contributed. I brought my whole heart, passion, talents, and commitment to building this next phase of SHG.
In that same span of time, SHG (and by extension, staff and associated artists) also experienced a series of other events: A painful and misdirected campaign meant to target for-profit galleries that had been popping up east of the river as harbingers of gentrification; navigating a four-year process to negotiate the purchase of the site with the City of Los Angeles (and with a former council member who now awaits trial for federal RICO charges); and weathering the storm of the pandemic that ravaged our community of artists and essential workers.
When I became Executive Director in 2018, I told the board I would not stay beyond my capacity to lead in a healthy, sustainable way. Sister Karen Boccalero dedicated her life to this organization and the artists of this community — she worked up until the day she died. Leaders at the board and staff level who stepped up in subsequent years have given so much of themselves. The familiar burnout necessitated by the nonprofit industrial complex, and not in any way unique to Self Help Graphics or the cultural sector, has not deterred these leaders from continued support of the organization to this day.
At the height of the pandemic, SHG began a process of cultural transformation: one centered on excavating and elevating the deep well of community knowledge, conocimiento, and collective cultural practices that have kept this beloved organization going. The “Reflection process'' — what we’ve called the cultural transformation work — has brought together artists, staff, board, and past SHG leadership who affirmed our efforts to ensure that the next leadership transition is nurturing, supportive, and centers through ceremony the responsibility and trust needed for the work. It is my hope to create a new precedent for leadership continuity at Self Help Graphics & Art, in partnership with our board and staff, and to be part of the lineage of Chicana/o/x brilliance that continues to support our cultural anchor.
Fortunately, what started as a two-year process has continued as the organization operationalizes five-decades worth of its institutional memory. This process is rooted in the notion that we, as a community, have everything we need to thrive by ourselves and for ourselves. However, despite the challenges of operating a nonprofit within an infrastructure that makes our work legible to traditional gatekeepers of financial resources, we are also stewarding a multi-generational cultural practice that has thrived in the face of socio-economic, racial, and environmental oppression. This paradox is our reality.
As part of this work, our staff is shifting how we work as cultural practitioners. Those of us who came up at a time when overworking was expected and rewarded were fed the perception that a work/life balance is impossible if you want to succeed. Working in the cultural sector has often meant learning to accept work environments that are not safe spaces for people of color.
The challenge in a place like Self Help Graphics & Art, however, is that it is so deeply tied to the Chicana/o/x and Latinx/e community that for some of us, the lines are blurred, and who we are, how we manifest ourselves in community, and our creative expression has become our labor. In an ideal world, our cultural work is met with reciprocity and provides enough support to sustain thriving lives. Yet the historic systemic undercapitalization of organizations like SHG have made this difficult to achieve.
We are on the cusp of cultural change. The pandemic and racial justice movements have demanded a shift in how workplaces operate to value individual staff members’ well-being. As someone who acclimated to strenuous, capitalistic work expectations throughout my career, I have vowed to change this culture at SHG. In partnership, the SHG board and staff are now working on policies that formalize the expectation of rest and balance into our work. This has necessitated boundaries for our expectations of capitalist-imposed “productivity” and is certainly challenging when working in a world that operates on false urgencies. The shift must be part of our collective daily practice, and it is my hope that it will lead to a healthier and more sustainable path for the team that keeps Self Help Graphics & Art going well into the future.
There are many benchmarks and achievements that will be part of my mark on Self Help Graphics. This shift toward a more sustainable cultural administration practice is the one that is crucial — not only for the current and future staff. May it also serve as a gesture of healing for past staff members, artists, and board members who burned out, and who may feel they gave more than what was reciprocated. Their tenures, unlike mine, did not take place during a time of major shifts globally in how we, as a society, think about supporting BIPOC cultural institutions and artists, and the challenges they faced, while similar, were often mired in justification of value and of impact. This wears on people and I can only hope that they see Self Help’s current state of health and stability as part of their impact as well. This cultural shift honors their contributions at the foundations of this place. With this in mind, I am modeling the shift and have acknowledged that I’ve reached the point of no longer having enough to give to myself, my family, and SHG sustainably. Here, too, my body has also let me know.
With gratitude and love for this community, my last day as Executive Director of Self Help Graphics & Art will be June 30, 2023. I leave inspired by the progress made to bridge the future plans for the next leader to step into a space of abundance as they complete the capital campaign, reopen a renovated home, and welcome back the community in the midst of the organization’s 50th anniversary celebration and programming. I will remain a Self Help Graphics fan, supporter, and ambassador, as I have been since walking through its doors for the very first time. I look forward to taking time to rest and seek a renewed focus on my mental health and wellness with my family.
Warmly,
Betty
With gratitude for my team, a brilliant group of cultural workers that I’ve learned so much from, the cultural transformation facilitation work of Quetzal Flores and Alison De La Cruz, and for the important work of Tricia Hersey via The Nap Ministry and the setting of boundaries she is articulating and modeling in the form of rest as resistance for Black communities and marginalized people.