L.A. Book of Friends

Juan Carlos Muñoz Hernandez “Heaven”: My style is kind of very free-form, but then I grew up around the gang culture, the low-rider culture in Boyle Heights.

There’s a mixture of a lot of information that I picked up unconsciously through the years, a lot of pain, a lot of happiness. Of course, there has to be happiness in there. It’s a reflection of what I go through, so it bounces back and then it goes into the paper, or into the sculpture, or into the canvas, or into the Black Book.

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.

Juan Carlos Muñoz Hernandez “Heaven”: We’re in where the whole thing kinda started it all for me out in the street, en las calles. It’s kinda the real thing here, you know? It’s like a school. This is the real school right here. This is where the concrete jungle kinda meets the art. A lot of realness here. I mean, it’s real too in the studio, it’s 100% real in the studio, but here, it’s seeing different colors, different conversations among people, so I feed off that energy. That energy goes into the wall. So it’s part of creating, you know?

Heaven. Thought about that name, I think, 1987, ’88. I just wanted to write Heaven everywhere just to kind of make people feel good, people that are stuck on the freeway, you know what I mean? On the way home, they see that Heaven on the side of the wall.

I come here in the night, when I paint, when I create. Before, I used to, honestly—I’m gonna be honest—I used to think of my friends that are no longer here with me. I used to think about them a lot. Now what I do is, I have music here, and I’ll put like, meditation music, or sometimes I’ll put oldies on.

Now, it depends. I could play an oldie, and it’ll take me back, you know what I mean? Back in the day. And that gets pretty deep, ’cause I go, “Oh, that song reminds me of this time.” And I think that’s what inspires me to keep creating. Being that I was raised in the Pico Aliso projects, a lot of my closest, dearest friends are not really here with me today. They’re on my mind all the time when I paint and when I create, so I’m creating for them, creating for their loved ones, to kind of put some positive force out in the world.

There’s smiles, but then there’s angry stuff in there too, because I’m like, “Man, they’re not here with me anymore, so let me produce this work to provide a smile and inspire the next generation.”

I think the Black Book is sacred, ’cause a lot of ideas start from there. It’s like necessity, you know, the mother of invention. And to be honest with you, it took me a while to kind of figure out where I was gonna go with it. What I was trying to do is bring the aerosol spray into the Black Book. So I did a blend of color. I did a dark blue blending with white. Then I did like a construction piece in there, and then I added some gold leaf in there, and that’s where I put my daughter’s name and put my boy’s name in there. ’Cause I knew this Black Book was gonna be part of history and be put in there with other books that have been there for centuries.

It’s starting to hit me a little bit. Yeah, it’s a big thing. ’Cause then once I’m not here, my grandkids could go there, like, “Oh, man, look, Grandpa was part of this.” They can see their name in there and they can actually see the book and see the DNA in there, you know, see the-what I used, you know. It was all handmade. You know, “What was Grandpa thinking about?”

My kids, man, my family, that’s what’s kinda kept me alive, and now I’m a grandpa, so that’s a big thing, man. You know, I didn’t think I was gonna make it till 30, and here I am, you know, here I am, and creating. And most important, being here in the moment.