Praise for His Art Keeps Young Muralist From Being Walled In by Harsh Gang Life

The corner of Wilmington Boulevard and G Street is a tough place. It’s home to a lot of guys with shaved heads, tattoos and time to kill.

During the day, cars creep by and drivers flash a peace sign at the group on the curb. By sundown, Wilmington and G is a place to buy drugs, bum a cigarette or share a 40-ounce bottle of beer and wait for trouble.

Amid the gangbanging and hard living, looking down upon the frustrations of the jobless young men hungry for recognition, is a just-painted red, yellow and green mural of the Virgin Mary.

For Jesse Rojas, the 21-year-old artist who painted the flower-framed Madonna, life will always be different, because the work has brought him praise.

It is praise that has changed his life, because Rojas cannot remember ever receiving any before.

Mentally sifting through 21 years, Rojas finds nothing that has brought him the recognition and compliments he has received in the two weeks it took to paint the Madonna.

Since he first picked up crayons as a little boy, Rojas has loved to draw. His first efforts were mostly cartoons or copies of other people’s drawings. By his teens he had moved on to portraits.

“I’ve done portraits of my mother, my father, nephews,” he said. “I did a portrait of myself from looking at my I.D. It came out real good. It came out just like me.”

And many of his friends sport elegantly scripted Rojas tattoos.

Dressed in khaki pants and a Green Bay Packers cap, Rojas, shirtless, is a walking mural of tattooed gang allegiances and beautiful women. Small dimples flash when he talks. But Rojas seldom smiles. The subject of praise--how to earn it and how to get more--is a serious one for him.

“People pass by here and some people tell me they really like it,” Rojas said of his mural. “It’s a really proud feeling I get. I get . . . I can’t describe it. It’s just inside a really proud feeling.”

He has the embarrassed, awkward gestures and comments of a first-time performer stunned by a standing ovation, realizing it is applause that had been missing from his life.

Jay Nunez and Robert Faris, senior lead officers of the Harbor Division of the Los Angeles Police Department, obtained paint and brushes for the project and Community Youth Gang Services sought the permission of the wall’s owners for Rojas’ mural.

Rojas was singled out for help by the agencies because of his obvious talent and sincere desire to leave gangbanging behind. They know he is not going to let go of the street life, however, without something else to turn to.

Also, Rojas has the respect of the neighborhood youths, and giving him a hand up is meant to inspire others.

“I’m the kind of guy who wants to stay out of trouble,” Rojas said. “But it’s hard because of the temptation--friends and money--that kind of temptation.

“Now that these guys here are going to help me, I know it’s going to work out,” he said, pointing to Gang Services workers Art Zepeda and Jesse Lopez. The Madonna was Jesse’s idea--”I knew everybody was going to like it in the community,” he said. Standing before the mural, Zepeda explains why the Madonna was a perfect choice for what has been a site for graffiti.

“The gangs themselves respect a Virgin Mary and God. If there are two things a Latino respects, it’s God and their mother. To write over it is to disrespect God and therefore to disrespect themselves,” Zepeda said.

Rojas was “chosen to do this because he’s one of the best drawers in Wilmington,” Zepeda said. “This guy has the imagination to do it. Look at this, here you got a young guy--he never went to school for this--and he’s spent 13, 14 days, four hours a day, on this.

“Imagine if someone actually helped him, if they extended a hand to him,” Zepeda said. “People will see this and say ‘Hey, I want to be like Jesse.’ You’ll get the kids looking up to him.”

Rojas looked at Zepeda and then at the Madonna. It’s an idea he likes. People looking up to him.

“See, I’m known, I’m known for a lot of things, but none of them are good,” Rojas said, his friends laughing at the understatement.

Gang Services is helping him get started as a muralist, recommending him to businesses, seeking blank walls for his work. Rojas painted the Madonna for free, but Brown’s Market in Wilmington has offered to pay him $200 for a mural on one of its walls. Rojas can’t wait for the next job.

“I’d love to keep doing things like this in the community. If people will help with the money for the paint and the brushes, I’ll be all right. I don’t care about the money--I’d do it for free. I’d do it for free just to get recognized.”

And, he adds, murals will slow down graffiti.

As for merchants who do not like murals and desperately want a white wall, “They can’t have it,” he said shaking his head. “See, my homies that write on the walls, they want a white wall too.”

A mural will help, if not solve the problem entirely, he said. Some merchants have had success by asking taggers to stop and then showing gratitude when they do, Rojas said.

Zepeda and Jesse Lopez, also with Community Youth Gang Services, and Rojas’ friends, jumped into the conversation. Mayco Transmissions a block away is a good example, they said.

“See, when a homeboy dies, they’ll donate their parking lot for a car wash” so his friends can raise the money to bury him, Zepeda said. “And look at their walls.” They are white.

And if someone wrote over Rojas’ wall, how would he feel?

It is incomprehensible. There are no words, just a small choking sound. It couldn’t happen. It better not happen. Finally, with a laugh he guesses he’d “probably beat them to death.”

Rojas is not a particularly religious man. To him, graffiti on the Madonna would be the theft of labor he put into the wall. It would be like scrawling on a piece of his heart. And it would destroy the greatest accomplishment of his life.

“Really, it’s the only one, my only accomplishment,” he said, looking at his work, returning to climb up the rickety wood ladder held at the bottom by two friends and propped up on the wall against the Virgin’s shoulder.