Art provides insight on inner city conditions in Los Angeles
HOLA Campus, located in and around Lafeyette Park, is a “home away from home” for hundreds of kids. This program provides a safe area to hang out, is open all year round and is an alternative to hanging out on the streets where gang violence is very common.
Most of the youth involved, which consist of Latinos and a few African Americans, live in communities where they are heavily impacted by gang violence, drugs and poverty. HOLA and its staff members, who are professional and highly talented volunteers, give them a chance to play, learn, explore and laugh.
Javier Carrillo, a young emerging artist from Los Angeles, California, joined the HOLA program when he moved from Mexico to Los Angeles at the age of seven. He is now a teaching assistant for HOLA, giving kids the chance he once had.
While being raised in a tough area in Mexico, Carrillo was around a lot of drugs and violence which influenced him into joining a gang. To stop the urge of joining one, he turned to sketching and painting.
Certain materials were not available, so Carrillo started with graffiti, which he now considers his “negative” artwork. Inspirational artists, such as Andy Warhol, not only turned him into a more positive individual but also shaped his artwork into a more positive feel.
“Most of my work expresses events from my life as being a Latino living in a city neighborhood,” said Carrillo.
According to Carlos Herrera, curator of GCSU’s Blackbridge Hall Art Gallery, “The works themselves are narrative stories that document Mexican-American culture.”
Each one of his paintings has a significant meaning behind it. For instance, one expresses the stages of his wife. Another one of his paintings expresses his relationship with his father.
Carrillo uses bright and dark colors in order to express emotion and certain challenges that he faced during his lifetime.
“The compositions and colors that he used were almost mesmerizing,” said Elizabeth Hunt, junior. “The depth among these paintings gives such an intimate feeling to his work.”
Carrillo donated one of his paintings, “Letting Go” to GCSU, and it will hang at the Focus Museum.
The exhibit, “Mi Vida en Los Angeles” by Javier Carrillo, will be held in the Blackbridge Hall Art Gallery until March 13.
Posted by Colonnade Archives
on Feb 27 2009. Filed under Features.
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