Valadez (born 1951) studied at East Los Angeles College in the early 1970s, then earned a BFA from California State University, Long Beach, in 1976. He has had several solo exhibitions in local galleries, as well as in San Francisco and New York. During the middle and late 1970s Valadez often worked on mural projects with young people; however, none of those murals still exist. In 1991 he completed a mural for the federal General Services Administration in El Paso, Texas. He spent 1996-98 working on a major mural commission for the federal courthouse in Santa Ana, in Orange County. (Robin K. Dunitz, Street Gallery, Guide to over 1000 Los Angeles Murals)
