Prints with a Chicano theme translate into a brilliant cultural bridge.

The shimmering rainbow of colors contrasts wildly with the white walls of the art gallery at Cal State Dominguez Hills.

The imagery includes brilliantly painted cars, pre-Columbian gods and serpents, a comet streaking over Los Angeles City Hall, an inviting kitchen and a somber religious procession of people with skulls in place of faces.

“Chicano art is a very loud and colorful voice, saying, ‘We are an artistic people,’ ” said Miguel Dominguez, the university’s Mexican-American Studies director. He serves as curator for an exhibition of 35 silk-screen prints, which he describes as representative of the “depth and diversity” of contemporary Chicano art.

All the works have been created since 1982 at Self-Help Graphics and Art in East Los Angeles. In an atelier program--stemming from the French word for studio or workshop--it offers Latino artists a place to produce their work under the guidance of a master printer in the silk-screen process.

While some of the pieces are by well-known artists--Frank Romero and Liz Rodriguez among them--the emphasis at Self-Help is on artists who are striving to make their mark.

“We’re there to give them a fighting chance,” said Alex Alferov, an artist and curator at Self-Help.

The art gallery, in the university’s Humanities and Fine Arts Building, is open weekdays, and guided tours are provided for student groups. A free public symposium on Chicano art--with a panel of four artists as well as Dominguez and other academics--will be given Saturday morning at 9. The art will be on view during that event.

Dominguez said the spotlight will be on the artists.

“I want a conference where people can hear artists talk about their work--what inspires them, the topics they like and the purpose of their art,” he said. “Many times you find that interpretation of the art piece is left up to a critic, not an artist.”

Dominguez calls Chicano art an “ethnic mission” in reaction to Anglo domination of Mexican culture in the Southwest. The art is rich in symbols of religion and the family. There is a mingling of place and time, he said, and that accounts for having works that reach back to Mayan symbols hanging next to depictions of elaborately painted Chevys that might be cruising through East Los Angeles.

One strong theme is death, Dominguez said, pointing to a corner of the show where people in a wedding and a religious procession have skulls, not faces. He said this reflects a pre-Columbian philosophy that life and death are intermingled: “It says death comes to everything; it will happen to you; accept it and go on living.”

Sister Karen Boccalero, a Franciscan artist and the director of Self-Help, said the Chicano artist has “links to Mexico and Latin America that are constantly being revived and lived out.”

Artist Romero believes the contemporary Chicano expression emerged from the black movement in the 1960s, when Chicanos began “going back to indigenous roots to find out who we were as people and artists,” he said.

Romero described “Carro,” his paint-splashed graphic of a car, that is in the university show, as one of his icons of urban Los Angeles. “We’re a motorized society, and I deal a lot with that,” he said. Growing up in East Los Angeles in the 1950s, Romero said, he was “in love with cars and the shapes they took . . . and the romantic notions, also, that cars are symbols of freedom.”

Dominguez said that Chicano art, long-known in the barrio, has made its way into the larger community in recent years. “The ethnic group has gotten larger. Its voice speaks louder. There has been a very pronounced movement among Chicanos to promote their art.”

Said Romero: “It used to be a strange little godchild, but it has become mainstream, a part of the Southwest or California experience now.”

The people at Self-Help believe they are a part of this emergence. “Basically we are active in promoting Chicano art,” said Boccalero, adding that prints produced at the studio are widely exhibited and that three are in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

She said the atelier program creates a non-competitive atmosphere where artists discuss their works and learn from each other. “Some who walk in have never done a print before,” she said.

Dominguez said the Chicano art show is an important event for the university, which serves a large Latino student body--12.5% of the 8,000 student enrollment, according to the university.

He said cultural misunderstanding is often a matter of cultural ignorance, adding, “In viewing art as a reflection of a culture, people will gain a better understanding of their neighbors, who may be across the block or across the city.”

What: Contemporary Chicano Art Symposium and art show.

When: Symposium on Saturday, 9 a.m. to noon; gallery exhibit open Monday to Friday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. through Dec. 6.

Where: Cal State Dominguez Hills Humanities and Fine Arts Building Auditorium (A-103), 1000 E. Victoria St., Carson.

Admission: Free.

Information: 516-3334; 516-3310.