L.A. Book of Friends
Petal & BlosmThis graffiti duo is dedicated to breaking barriers and creating opportunities
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- English
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Petal: When we were coming up, it was definitely less than like one girl for every hundred boys. That’s a generous estimate. It’s just a reflection of society. It’s just a reflection of what girls are told what they can and can’t do. Female graffiti artists can be a threat just via their existence because it’s a challenge to the status quo.
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.
Petal: I think right now, people in general want to talk about women and what women’s contributions in different areas, because they’re realizing that it hasn’t been spoken about enough. And then there’s just the aspect of people wanting to capitalize on that trend. And I think that, you know, L.A. particularly, it’s been difficult for women to be represented as equals in street culture, including graffiti. Girls and women play such a huge role from very early ages and oftentimes that’s overlooked.
Blosm: Women in Hollywood, we were really young. Petal was out there running around. I was definitely running around.
Petal: We’ve always shared big opportunities with each other. And so I think that’s how we really became known to be working together to the point where when they think of one, they think of the other.
Blosm: She attracted me, she had a magnet, you know, like, oh, you, come here, like I wanted to engage with.
Petal: It was the killer queen bee connection. I love bees. I just have a spiritual, cosmic connection to bees. But the bees actually came to both of us. We both have a bee connection.
Blosm: When the bees started developing little by little, I started thinking about it, and I was like, you know, there’s so many drones of these damn guys everywhere. So I really felt like, I really felt like all the chicks really need to like really feel like they’re the queen, you’re queens, you’re queens. Like, I kept wanting to push that idea on females around me and just kind of be inspiring.
Petal: Well before the bees, you know, for us, there was the writing on the wall. So the writing on the wall came first. To me, you know, the writing has like a spiritual aspect and it’s carrying on the word and the writing of different peoples, it’s like more of an art. And coming up we don’t even think of it as art. For the most part, most graffiti artists weren’t getting some kind of art school opportunities and they had this like need to express. To me, it’s like, it’s very powerful and it’s therapeutic.
Most of the stories being told about graffiti artists, especially in L.A., are just stories of criminalization. And there’s not really a lot of attention paid to the art and what’s been happening with the art for all these years and how it actually is used for therapy, you know, how a lot of the work that we do as teaching artists is for the mental wellness of the youth.
That’s really important to me, and I really love having opportunities to do something that I used to get in trouble for and like to teach people just all the different ways they can use it.
We really put in a lot of thought to what we wanted to represent, what we wanted people to see in the future. Instead of doing our names, we really just did an image of downtown with the historic MTA piece in the L.A. River and my bees swarming over it. And we had a bunch of different loved ones represented throughout the piece. It’s just really significant. And so the idea that people in the future will look at that is really beautiful to me, because it’s preserving a piece of history that’s really significant to Los Angeles graffiti culture.
I mean, with all due respect that, you know, there’s no way that any book that has only 150 artists in it—
Blosm: represents everything—
Petal: the entirety of Los Angeles graffiti, you know, I mean, it’s just—but it’s definitely a great sampling, and it’s very significant that people have finally recognized what we’ve been recognizing and why we’ve dedicated so much of our lives to creating this and developing and building graffiti, is because it’s a foundational human communication and art form. That is just, to me, carrying on all the way from the hieroglyphics.
This is important that we document our human history, and this is part of that.
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Body Content
Meet L.A.-based graffiti artists, Petal & Blosm.
Petal started writing on walls when she was 13 years old. Self-taught, her arts education took place in city streets, graffiti yards, and along the L.A. River. Her bold and distinct Calligraffiti style is a fusion of traditional L.A. graffiti and gang writing, combined with Armenian and Arabic calligraphy. An arts educator and activist, Petal uses murals as a vehicle of expression and community empowerment. Bees, calligraphy, geometry, and abstract letter formations are the focus of her work. “Graffiti,” she says, is “a foundational human communication and art form.”
L.A. Graffiti Black Book
$35/£27
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Petal: When we were coming up, it was definitely less than like one girl for every hundred boys. That’s a generous estimate. It’s just a reflection of society. It’s just a reflection of what girls are told what they can and can’t do. Female graffiti artists can be a threat just via their existence because it’s a challenge to the status quo.
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.
Petal: I think right now, people in general want to talk about women and what women’s contributions in different areas, because they’re realizing that it hasn’t been spoken about enough. And then there’s just the aspect of people wanting to capitalize on that trend. And I think that, you know, L.A. particularly, it’s been difficult for women to be represented as equals in street culture, including graffiti. Girls and women play such a huge role from very early ages and oftentimes that’s overlooked.
Blosm: Women in Hollywood, we were really young. Petal was out there running around. I was definitely running around.
Petal: We’ve always shared big opportunities with each other. And so I think that’s how we really became known to be working together to the point where when they think of one, they think of the other.
Blosm: She attracted me, she had a magnet, you know, like, oh, you, come here, like I wanted to engage with.
Petal: It was the killer queen bee connection. I love bees. I just have a spiritual, cosmic connection to bees. But the bees actually came to both of us. We both have a bee connection.
Blosm: When the bees started developing little by little, I started thinking about it, and I was like, you know, there’s so many drones of these damn guys everywhere. So I really felt like, I really felt like all the chicks really need to like really feel like they’re the queen, you’re queens, you’re queens. Like, I kept wanting to push that idea on females around me and just kind of be inspiring.
Petal: Well before the bees, you know, for us, there was the writing on the wall. So the writing on the wall came first. To me, you know, the writing has like a spiritual aspect and it’s carrying on the word and the writing of different peoples, it’s like more of an art. And coming up we don’t even think of it as art. For the most part, most graffiti artists weren’t getting some kind of art school opportunities and they had this like need to express. To me, it’s like, it’s very powerful and it’s therapeutic.
Most of the stories being told about graffiti artists, especially in L.A., are just stories of criminalization. And there’s not really a lot of attention paid to the art and what’s been happening with the art for all these years and how it actually is used for therapy, you know, how a lot of the work that we do as teaching artists is for the mental wellness of the youth.
That’s really important to me, and I really love having opportunities to do something that I used to get in trouble for and like to teach people just all the different ways they can use it.
We really put in a lot of thought to what we wanted to represent, what we wanted people to see in the future. Instead of doing our names, we really just did an image of downtown with the historic MTA piece in the L.A. River and my bees swarming over it. And we had a bunch of different loved ones represented throughout the piece. It’s just really significant. And so the idea that people in the future will look at that is really beautiful to me, because it’s preserving a piece of history that’s really significant to Los Angeles graffiti culture.
I mean, with all due respect that, you know, there’s no way that any book that has only 150 artists in it—
Blosm: represents everything—
Petal: the entirety of Los Angeles graffiti, you know, I mean, it’s just—but it’s definitely a great sampling, and it’s very significant that people have finally recognized what we’ve been recognizing and why we’ve dedicated so much of our lives to creating this and developing and building graffiti, is because it’s a foundational human communication and art form. That is just, to me, carrying on all the way from the hieroglyphics.
This is important that we document our human history, and this is part of that.
