Fabian Debora believes that art can be a solitary practice, but it can save you from a life of abandonment and gang violence.
Deborah, a muralist and co-founder of the Homeboy Art Academy in East Los Angeles, points to himself as an example of that belief.
Debora, a former gang member who spent several years incarcerated, was recently honored by the National Endowment for the Arts as a 2024 NEA National Heritage Fellow. He received the award Wednesday during a ceremony at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., alongside other recipients recognized for their contributions to folk and traditional arts.
Debora, 48, was recognized for her work as a teacher and mentor to others seeking to find purpose through art. At the Homeboy Art Academy, which is connected to Homeboy Industries, Debora and other mentors provide guidance to youth who are actively involved in gang life, have recently been released from prison, or are seeking refuge from gang life.
Art, Débora believes, can also take you to beautiful places.
His artistic subjects include the people he sees in the working-class neighborhoods where he grew up and still considers home.
In March, Debora’s Renaissance-inspired series titled “Cara de Vago” showcased her paintings inspired by the Italian master Caravaggio. In Debora’s work, she painted a young woman from Lincoln Heights standing like the Madonna. Angels descended upon young cholos under the orange glow of a Los Angeles streetlight. In another painting, a masked indigenous warrior stood before a disbelieving saint who stuck a finger in his side, much like the biblical scene of the apostle Thomas with Christ after his resurrection.
Débora said she owes much of her inspiration to the Chicano muralist movement that grew up in Los Angeles in the 1960s and 1970s.
“I think what the Chicano mural movement has taught me is that we paint the truth,” Debora said after receiving her award. “We paint what is real. We paint what is present, you know? And we also paint not only the struggles, but also the social justices and the resilience that we discover as human beings or as barrio citizens, or, let’s say, people of color, or whatever you want to call it.”
Deborah's rise from gang member to nationally recognized artist hinges on the kindness of Homeboy Industries founder Father Greg Boyle.
At age 12, Debora joined a gang and was in and out of juvenile detention for fighting, stealing and making life difficult for himself and his family. In 1994, she faced a three-year sentence in a juvenile labor camp until Boyle intervened. He convinced a Los Angeles Superior Court judge to include Debora in a program with the East Los Streetscapers, an artist collective that began after the Chicano Moratorium in the 1970s and morphed into the Palmetto Gallery, an art space that was founded in 1990.
“I have known Fabian for over thirty years, and throughout that time, art was his refuge and the focus of his life,” Boyle said in a statement acknowledging the NEA’s National Heritage Fellow award. She called it “a recognition of his creative talent and will have a positive and lasting impact on his family, all members of the Homeboy Art Academy, and our entire Homeboy community.”
During her acceptance speech, Debora thanked Boyle, Homeboy Industries and her academy students, whom she calls her “art gang.”
“You give me life every day and for that I am grateful,” he said.
In October, Debora plans to install a three-story mural at a Boyle Heights apartment complex called “The Silver Lining of Boyle Heights.”
“When you think about my life and you think about everything I’ve been through,” Debora said, “you see all the layers of Boyle Heights that sometimes people don’t get to see and you experience it.”
He sees the mural as an opportunity to give back to the community, which is just another way of trying to create a beautiful place.
