Celebrating Judith Baca’s Vision for the ‘World’ : Art: The muralist hopes to create a monument to peace with ‘World Wall.’ Parts of the huge work will be on view this weekend at Lincoln Park.

“Historically, artists have been thought of as the visionaries,” says Judith F. Baca, a leading Chicana artist whose vision has created such monumental results as the half-mile-long “Great Wall of Los Angeles” mural painted along the Tujunga Wash during the past 10 years by Baca and hundreds of teens.

Among her other accomplishments are Los Angeles’ first citywide mural project, which has produced more than 250 works over 10 years, and the 3-year-old “Neighborhood Pride: Great Walls Unlimited” program, which has commissioned 36 additional murals thus far.

Baca’s latest goal makes her past achievements pale by comparison: She hopes to create an international vision of peace--a concept which she describes as “an active vision, in which negotiating toward peace would be as exciting to younger generations as video games . . . which now focus on destruction and war.”

Toward that end, Baca has conceived “World Wall: A Vision of the Future Without Fear,” an evolving, 210-foot portable mural that will be seen in South Africa, Mexico, Japan and Spain (coinciding with the 1992 Olympics) and four other countries. The mural has already been seen in Finland and the Soviet Union, and begins a three-month stint at Washington’s Smithsonian Institution in July.

Eventually, the mural will have 14 10x30-foot panels, seven of which will be painted by Baca and arranged in a semicircle 100-feet in diameter. Hung along the outside of the semicircle will be seven additional panels--painted by artists from each of the countries toured by the mural.

L.A. audiences will get what may be their only chance to view the work during a brief showing this weekend at Lincoln Park’s Plaza de la Raza. But local audiences will see only the seven completed panels--five by Baca, the other two by artists from Finland and the Soviet Union.

“The ‘World Wall’ is taking what I have learned in the neighborhoods of Los Angeles on an international level,” said Baca, noting that this concept actually grew out of her “Great Wall” project, which she credits with teaching L.A. history to countless teens.

“Kids learn faster through the murals than they do through textbooks,” Baca said. “And what we hope they learn through the ‘World Wall’ is to envision a future without fear.”

Baca, 44, who painted her first public murals at Hollenbeck Park in 1971, said she hoped her peace idea would spread in the same way the mural movement grew in Los Angeles. “In 1969 and ‘70, there were no murals in Los Angeles,” she said. “Then the movement started in East Los Angeles with the Hispanic community there, and now, we’re definitely the international seat of the mural movement. . . . I think the ‘World Wall’ is going to do the same thing--create the first of a series of global collaborative projects just like the murals of East L.A. set in motion murals springing up around the whole city, the whole country and the world. The envisioning of hope has been a practice for many artists, and now we want to bring that vision to the world.”

For those who miss the “World Wall” this weekend, Baca says she would like to “bring it home to its origin once it’s complete” in about 1995. Her hopes for funding such a viewing are slim, however.

“It’s ironic that I’ve gotten more support on an international level than a local level,” Baca said, noting that other countries have sponsored visits to their cities and provided free accommodations to Baca and her assistants, but locally, she has been turned down by several foundations and councils including the Getty Trust Fund for the Visual Arts, the Lannan Foundation and the James Irvine Foundation.

Baca first conceived of the “World Wall” in 1986 through funding from the U.S. Department of Education and organizers of “The Great Peace March,” which was to have taken 1,400 people on a 255-day trek from Los Angeles to Washington in pursuit of bilateral nuclear disarmament. But when that movement began to fizzle, production on the mural stalled. However, additional funding from groups such as the Rockefeller Foundation, the Women’s Foundation and Arco was later found. Production resumed and Baca left for Joensuu, Finland, with 4 1/2 completed panels last summer. She then took the project to Moscow’s Gorky Park, where it was seen by an estimated 150,000 Soviets.

“The intention is to create a dialogue of a vision of the future where there will be a world without fear,” Baca said in her Venice loft. As she glanced at her latest panel--which was designed a year ago, yet uncannily relates to the Gulf War through its depiction of tanks and a blood-colored oil spill--Baca said that she has selected countries for the mural’s three-year, $1-million tour with an eye to “those where it seems the most important for them to be talking about their future.”

Baca began her project by asking various people to define peace: “Everyone’s definition was simply the absence of war. There was no active definition of peace itself, and no visual set of images that went along with the concept of peace. So we wanted to create those images.”

In conceiving the “World Wall” Baca brought together an international team of 45 students and artists who defined peace simply as “balance,” which became the name of the central panel. In it, Baca illustrates the concept through Hopi- and Eastern-influenced depictions balancing the sun and the moon, the land and the sea, and man and woman. Eventually, “Balance” will be flanked on the left by three panels illustrating the spiritual or individual means to achieving peace, and on the right by three panels outlining material and economic means to peace.

“As artists, we have the power of spreading ideas, and this is a way in which the power of ideas can move around the world,” said Baca, who was a founder of Venice’s Social and Public Art Resource Center in 1976. “The chain is beginning, we’re forming links between the world through artists. We’re putting our visionary position to work.”

“World Wall: A Vision of the Future Without Fear,” at Plaza de la Raza, 3540 N. Mission Road, Lincoln Park, (213) 223-2475. Saturday and Sunday, 10:30 a.m.-5 p.m.