L.A. Book of Friends

Fishe: Graffiti inhabits a really interesting dichotomy of space where you both want a lot of attention while remaining anonymous. I almost see it as like a superhero or supervillain an antihero where you don’t know who’s the guy behind the mask is, or at least in general, the guy in the mask doesn’t want you to know who he is. While he is out at night being a vigilante or creating all this clandestine work, it’s a dialogue between, hey look at me, but don’t look at my face. Just look at my work. Look at my marks. Look at what I left behind.

Sergio Torres: Inspired by a 17th-century book for aristocrats called a “Liber Amicorum” or book of friends, the Getty Graffiti Black Book connects a community of artists around Los Angeles. This is the story of those artists.

Fishe: When I do get an energetic block, whether it be in my personal life or in my creative life, I do find that going out and painting graffiti fixes the energy, it aligns everything after I come home and things just start working again, my communication skills increase. For me oftentimes just the act of painting, I stop thinking for a minute and it almost becomes automatic and it just kind of flows through you. It becomes something you do without being too caught up and overthinking things.

The art I make is definitely influenced by my years as a graffiti writer. When I make graffiti, it’s still somewhat formal, traditional wild-style graffiti. However, when I take my work outside of that context and I put it on a legal mural or a canvas, I incorporate images from sacred geometry, images from different traditions and cultures, including my own as a Mexican American, I sometimes borrow from that vocabulary. In general, when we’re doing these kinds of murals it’s a little bit of a departure. It’s not really letter based like most of my historic work has been. However, I’ve just mutated into something more palatable and that makes more sense in a neighborhood than just my name.

I write “Fishe” or “Fishe1,” I’m from Los Angeles. I was born in Mexico City, and I represent the Killers of Giants and LTS graffiti crews. I was first introduced into the fine arts via graffiti art. I got into graffiti art in junior high. At the time, there was a lot of gang violence and it was parallel to other subcultures like skateboarding, raving, graffiti, and I just really liked the visual strength that graffiti provided.

In my particular neighborhood where my school was in Hollywood, there was a lot of really well-known graffiti writers that were very active, creating very intensely beautiful murals. I lived on the valley side of things, and then I went to school on the L.A. side of things. So I had the benefit of not being from just one neighborhood. I got to explore and grow up and take from various cultures and various neighborhoods. And in the end, what I give back to the neighborhoods when they create work, I think, I have a deeper understanding of each community I’m in because I’ve got to spend time in more communities around L.A. than just one.

When it came to trying to create and develop the ideas for the piece that I contributed to the Getty Black Book, I definitely wanted to draw into my own personal history as well as my cultural history, being an immigrant. I actually arrived the United States as an undocumented immigrant, and that had so much of an influence in my subconscious that I didn’t realize. And then it continued to, and now the climate being as it is, I think it’s important to both represent and celebrate that part of my history and my tradition.

I included Chichen Itza, even though I’m not a Mayan myself, I think it’s, symbolically it represents the strength and the history of the Mexican culture on this continent. I also incorporated the Hunab Ku and some other sacred geometric symbols in the background, as well as the mushrooms, which are ancient medicine that you know, has been used by people in Mexico for hundreds if not thousands of years. And that I think is an important healing tool that people can use now that maybe is neglected in contemporary culture.

One of the really amazing things that the Getty Black Book did was it created a sense of unity amongst different crews. And it brought us together in real life. I got to meet with dudes that I admired for my whole life. I got to paint on the same wall with guys that I’d been looking up to for so long. So, it was really magic. I think it really served to connect the community in a really strong way that might have not happened so organically without the book.

I really appreciate that the institutions are paying attention to us and are allowing us to tell our story from our own perspective. I’m glad they respect us enough and understand us enough to realize that that’s the best way to tell the story versus somebody with a PhD that thinks they understand what the culture is about, trying to represent and tell people what it’s about. I’m glad that we do get the cameras pointed at us sometimes, even though I’d rather not be in front of one.