An Artist Is Rediscovered

His name is Juan Dzul, not Juan Dzyl. His family did not return to Mexico two years ago, as some had speculated, but stayed all along in South-Central Los Angeles.

Juan is the boy who had won a neighborhood art contest, then seemingly vanished into thin air, disappointing the sponsors who wanted to honor him--and who nonetheless put up banners with his artwork throughout the neighborhood.

A teacher’s aide at 52nd Street Elementary School who read a Feb. 26 Times article about the dilemma thought the name sounded familiar. So the aide, Juan Estrada, said he “checked in the computer and back-traced the name.”

*

Bingo.

It turned out Juan had left 52nd Street School three years ago. It also turned out that he was now 14 years old, not 8, as the art contest sponsors had thought.

Estrada called his former student and showed him the Times article wondering where he was. Juan “felt like I was wanted.”

The boy allowed Estrada to turn him in to Helen Johnson, chairwoman of the Vermont Square Neighborhood Assn.

Johnson had been searching unsuccessfully for Dzul for the last two years. Her one remaining clue to Dzul’s identity was his name scrawled on the back of his painting. Unfortunately, among the hundreds of contest entries, nearly all other evidence of the painter’s identity had seemingly disappeared.

A committee of 15 neighborhood judges had picked Dzul’s painting as the contest winner. Despite being unable to find him, Johnson had reproduced his painting on street banners and held on to his award, hoping the boy might one day reappear.

And so he did, with Estrada’s help, at the steps of the Vermont Square library last month.

“I’m so excited, so pleased that Juan is getting the recognition he rightly deserves,” said Johnson, who kept hugging the artist over and over, as if to make sure he really existed.

A sheepish Juan explained he had not meant to disappear.

He had painted his apple tree as part of an art class final. Unbeknown to him, his art teacher had submitted it to the contest. A few weeks later, an association official called and told him he had won, giving him the time and place of the award ceremony.

His mother, however, didn’t believe her son’s tale about winning an art contest he didn’t even know he had entered. So, he explained, she overslept, finally humoring her son by driving him to the ceremony--too late.

Even though the neighborhood association held his award for another week, he was unable to pick it up because, given the violence in South-Central, his parents “didn’t let me go out that much.”

Instead, when his mother drove him through Vermont Square on shopping expeditions, he pointed out the dozens of neighborhood street banners illustrated with his apple tree.

Finally, she believed him.

“I told my classmates, but they all thought I was making it up,” he said.

Johnson sought help from the Los Angeles school district’s administrative office, but with no success. Dzul was thought to have been 6 when he entered the contest; he was in fact 12. He was thought to have scrawled the name of his teacher, Perez, on the back of his painting; in fact, he had scrawled “Per. (period) 2.” He was thought to have attended Normandie Avenue Elementary School; he had, in fact, attended the 52nd Street School.

And what looked like a “Y” in his signature was actually a “U.”

With all the false leads, the mystery may never have been solved had not teacher’s aide Juan Estrada remembered his former artistic student and sought him out.

“It feels all right to be discovered,” the boy said with a grin. “But I’m not sure I’m a real artist.”

He had, over the last two years, strayed from painting to pursue his new love: playing the baritone horn in his current school’s marching band.

“Maybe I’ll paint again.” he said.