Fabian Debora uses art as a tool for gang prevention at Homeboy Art Academy in LA.
Credit: Courtesy of Fabian Debora
As a restless eighth grader at Dolores Mission Catholic School in Los Angeles, Fabian Debora often drew pictures at his desk. One day the teacher confiscated his artwork and ripped it up in front of the whole class. Debora, who cherishes his drawing, felt betrayed. He lost his temper, threw a desk at the teacher and got expelled.
The incident led to an epiphany. Debora was summoned before Father Greg Boyle, the beloved parish priest who runs Homeboy Industries, a renowned gang intervention program in East Los Angeles. Instead of chastising him, Boyle asked Debora to draw him something and later persuaded his probation officer to let him work as an apprentice to Wayne Healy, a pioneer in the city’s Chicano mural movement. Art became his lifeline.
“I realized that I’m an artist,” said the soft spoken Debora, 49. “I discovered it young enough to know that this is something that belonged to me, and no one’s gonna take that from me. And I held onto it.”
That drive led him to co-found Homeboy Art Academy, a group that uses arts education to empower formerly gang-involved and incarcerated youth.
“Man, as a formerly incarcerated, gang-involved individual, there aren’t many spaces for me,” he said. “I don’t have the means to go join an art school of some sort. So I’ll have to create a space where these kids can come and all services are free.”
Part sanctuary, part vocational training center and part studio, the academy resists the notion that art is a precious and rarified pursuit for the elite. Here art is raw and real. You learn to paint your truth, to be unblinking about what you see, but also to feel the freedom of a blank canvas.
“They are the absolute best, completely authentic, devoted to helping people,” said Diane Luby Lane, founder of the poetry education group, Get Lit. “Fabian teaches people to be artists. He respects and utilizes real life experiences and perspectives.”
The recipient of the prestigious National Endowment of the Arts Heritage Fellowship, Debora believes art has the power to change lives. In addition to working as an artist, he is also a teacher and mentor to others seeking to find purpose through art.
“Let’s flip arts education on its head,” said Debora, as he walked around his studio at the art academy. “Let’s take the language and the vocabulary of the arts and tailor it to the lived experiences of this population while introducing relevant information such as in hip hop and street art.”
Born in El Paso, Texas, Debora first discovered art as a little boy weathering a tumultuous childhood in Boyle Heights, which he describes as “one of the roughest projects east of the Mississippi.” The tension bled into his family life, he said. He remembers hiding when his parents fought.
“I used to blame myself,” he recalled wistfully. “I would go and hide under a coffee table, and I would start to sketch, and I would just create my own world to escape my reality. That’s when I found art to be more than just a gift. It was almost like a big brother who held me.”
Violence was embedded in the ecosystem he grew up in, with eight gangs jostling for supremacy and few safe spaces from crime and addiction. By 12, he joined a gang, began to deal drugs and got addicted to them. He wrestled with substance abuse for years before trying to commit suicide at 30, by running across the freeway. That’s when he found his spiritual center and his salvation, his cause.
Now he tries to bring the succor of art to young people who feel hopeless to shape their own destiny.
“Art is a vehicle for healing, art is motivating,” says Debora. “It gives you a sense of breathing room, you’re escaping from your realities, as you’re creating. You feel inspired when you realize what beautiful work of art has come out of this. It opens up senses in the brain that haven’t been tapped into.”
While Debora specializes in visual art, the academy also offers classes in everything from creative writing and photography, to coding and poetry. He takes on those who believe they have nothing to lose. That’s who he used to be.
“I want the kids who are hanging out in the basketball court smoking weed all day, kids who are overlooked,” he says, lingering in front of the academy’s altar to indigenous gods. “If you’re gang related and struggling with a drug problem, if you’ve been incarcerated, that’s what qualifies you for this program.”
The impact of Debora’s work resonates throughout the Los Angeles arts community. It’s been a formidable example of how creativity can transform the arc of a person’s life.
“It’s astounding what they do at Homeboy,” says Austin Beutner, former LAUSD Superintendent and author of the arts education mandate, Prop. 28. “It’s hard work but they save lives, one by one. It shows you the power of art. You can be 8 or 28 and the arts can change your life.”
As a young man in ‘80s Los Angeles, Debora responded to the siren song of hip-hop music and graffiti art, the vibrancy of youth culture. The murals became portals to often forgotten Chicano history and culture.
The ancient meets the now in this audacious body of work, from graffiti to fine art. Debora delights in juxtaposing the eye of the masters with a modern urban vibe. Some of his most well-known paintings are fashioned after the manner of Italian master Caravaggio but rooted in the grit of Boyle Heights, such as a portrait of a girl from the barrio striking the pose of the Madonna. He’s now working on a project that deconstructs the Sistine Chapel.
“We are reclaiming the universal language of art,” he said.
Troubled souls often find solace in the universality of dark feelings, the way a painting from the Renaissance can capture how we feel today. That is the power of art as activism.
“Carravagio was also an outcast,” he said. “He was a thug, a killer, a murderer yet he found his spirituality through art.”
Debora uses art like a scalpel to cut away the layers of posturing and pretense that many of his students protect themselves with. He uses art to get at the truths they try to hide, even from themselves.
“The work of Homeboy Art Academy is transformational in providing youth a pathway, learning how to take ownership of their own stories, which are often negated by others who deem themselves more powerful,” says Merryl Goldberg, a veteran music and arts professor at Cal State San Marcos. “Lifting up voices at risk of being suppressed could not be more fundamental to a just and compassionate society.”
Art opens a window to another life, Deborah says. In addition to his work at the academy, he also teaches drawing to inmates at Tehachapi state prison. He cherishes his work with “the lifers,” because they need the solace of art the most.
“People need to be seen, they need to be heard,” he said. “It’s a sense of hope. When we come in, we paint windows on those ceiling walls so they can escape for the time being.”
