Journey to Surrender: Creative Minds

Monday, January 25, 2016

Creative Minds

Early the next morning we jumped in a taxi with ¨Twin¨and rode to the famous ¨Market 28¨ to see the

Creative Minds tattoo studio where he works with his brother, ¨Happy.¨

Twin and Happy haven´t had it easy. They learned their art chops in the school of hard knocks, tagging walls, spray-painting abandoned boxcars in train-yards, tattooing bad guys and doing huge murals at urban art fairs across Mexico. As my brother traveled across the United States they would follow, living at times in San Diego, California, Richmond Virginia, or Salt Lake City, Utah. They picked up a sensitivity for urban art as it has been expressed in barrios and communities in the United States and Mexico.

While both are versatile graffiti and tattoo artists, Twin concentrates on images, while Happy’s forte is lettering. Being a tattoo artist is quite demanding as one needs to lay down a fluid line with no hesitation. Blink and the needle slips. Twin and Happy are in demand not only as tattoo artists, but as clothing designers. They’re in the midst of developing a line of t-shirts and hoodies with urban themes.

I confess that I find their themes shocking at times; there are many examples of memento mori in their work: Skulls, daggers, knives and pistols feature prominently and remind us that this life is temporary, that death lurks behind the next street lamp.

And yet the violence in their art mirrors the violence that terrorizes the streets of Mexico and East L.A.

Their work reflects the gang culture that permeates Latino barrios from Whittier to Tepito. And yet neither Happy nor Twin use specific gang tags in their work. They pay tribute to no particular underworld society, but play with the themes that are common within those urban subcultures.

If you look closely at Twin’s work, you can see that he is playfully nostalgic for the good old days of East L.A., when the “chicana” or “chola” girls wore their hair long and black, when the mandatory “look” was jeans, bien planchados and a pendleton shirt buttoned only at the collar worn over a white t-shirt.

His take on the “homies” is especially rich, coming from a deep realization of two cultures, more Mexican than “chicano” more tropical than strictly “cholo.”

Together, the twins have collaborated on a myriad of projects. Their art lives on the living flesh on those they have tattooed, and on walls from Echo Park to Cancun. It's impossible for me to reproduce their catalogue here, but a few drawings will suffice.

Whether it's a love-struck cholo offering balloons and roses...

...or the object of his romantic gestures with a rose in her hair and a flower in her fedora...Twin's observations of life in the barrio have a certain nostalgic sweetness for the 1970s in East L.A.

Sometimes his paintings are stark and shocking.

A joint-smoking tiger devours a cobwebbed skull as a rat offers him a light. And yet, while some might find these these images morally outrageous, Twin and Happy are two of the gentlest people I've ever met.

Of the two identical twins, Happy is quite soft-spoken and projects his mother's serious and practical side, while Twin is gregarious and easy-going with his father's grin and sense of humour. Being together with them reminded me of my brother and the good times we used to have.

Aurora with the twins

Before they left, we had a chance to go to the beach together.

At Mandala Beach in Cancun

I used to take his father Philo to Sunset Beach when we were kids. Now his son took me to one of the greatest beaches in Cancun, Mandala beach. It's funny how karma works.

I was only in Cancun for a couple of days, but felt that I was fortunate to get to know my nephews. But as suddenly as we met, they were called away to Los Angeles, California for a convention of tattoo artists.

Their work is being taken up and celebrated by the Los Angeles version of Creative Minds as well as by artists like David van Gough http://www.davidgoughart.com as well as the Lower Left in Hollywood.