Boyle Heights mural celebrates women’s ‘Empowerment’ Antonio Mejías-Rentas

When Isabel Peinado was 15, she spent the summer of her sophomore year at the Los Angeles County High School of the Arts painting her first public memorial.

Over 600 hours –from late June to early August, in 2017– she put up 16 images of inspirational women on the side wall of a Boyle Heights market.

Titled “Empowerment,” the mural pays homage to an eclectic group of “inspirational” women that includes labor leader Dolores Huerta and Mexican painter Frida Kahlo, as well as civil rights activist Rosa Parks, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai, the late singer Selena Quintanilla Pérez and comedian and TV host Ellen DeGeneres.