He has worked with the traveling art collective Grupo Soap del Corazón and is a founder of Art-A-Whirl,[4][5] the largest open-studio tour in America.
He later enrolled at Lake Forest College for a two-year period, during which he devoted himself to activism, regularly marching, picketing, and protesting for various causes.
[6] In 1968, Padilla moved to California and immersed himself in the counterculture movement in San Francisco and Berkeley, learning from spiritual leaders who visited at the time, such as Ram Das,[8] Swami Muktananda, and Suzuki Roshi.
[11] Padilla was influenced by the Mexican tradition of Día de Los Muertos[12] (Day of the Dead) and the making of ofrendas.
His visual artworks often contain images of Mexican-style calaveras, or skulls, reflecting his appreciation for the traditional Mexican relationship with death.
[6] In 2021, Grupo Soap del Corazón published a zine, “Fabulista 2,” featuring political cartoons and poetry by Padilla along with the work of other artists in the collective.
[18] In 2024, Tavera and Padilla, alongside the Grupo Soap del Corazón, curated an exhibit with fifteen Latinx visual artists at the Minnesota Museum of American Art.