From street to gallery

Luis Pena

The artwork of former East Los Angeles gang member George Yepes is

making an impression on visitors to the Chicano Visions display at

Urban Earth Gallery in Corona del Mar.

Yepes’ work has been so well received at the gallery that gallery

owner Rico Garcia said he has seen awe on people’s faces.

Garcia considers Yepes the most important Chicano painter today .

“They don’t have to venture into the Eastside of L.A. to see this

artwork, to walk up close and see the brush work,” Yepes said.

The responsibility of a gallery owner is to promote the progress

of art, not baby the stagnation of it, Garcia said.

Garcia wanted to do something that was out of the “conservative

comfort-box” that Orange County has created for itself. For that

reason, he chose to have Yepes, who has been able to capture the

Chicano experience in his art.

“So bringing in a radical, visually intense Chicano artist into

the community like George -- I didn’t know what to expect,” Garcia

said.

Yepes grew up in the “hood” of East L.A. and lived an almost Dr.

Jekyll and Mr. Hyde experience. A rival gang that was five blocks

away heavily recruited Yepes. Joining a gang was dangerous enough

without it being a rival gang.

But while a feared gang member on the streets, he was also the

good Catholic school student and even student body president in high

school.

He has outlived all of his enemies and now concentrates on the

gifts that his private school education gave him. He sleeps all day

and creates his masterpieces at night.

Gangs have spread throughout American culture, with people shaving

their heads and wearing gang attire. These people were never in gangs

and are just following the musical and dress trends of today, Yepes

said.

He has actually been able to incorporate his former life in the

fast lane into the brushworks of his paintings, which isn’t something

that someone simply wearing a certain bad look could do. He has lived

the life that they are trying to portray through what they wear and

in what they are listening to on the radio, Yepes said.

Yepes uses his experience to create rather than being a social

outcast with no respect. Some of his collectors are Cheech Marin,

Sean Penn, Patricia Arquette and Robert Rodriquez, director of “Spy

Kids” and “Once Upon a Time in Mexico.”

“I was born a painter,” Yepes said. “When I first started drawing

at 3 years old, I never did stick figures. I went right for drawing

riders on horseback and Roman chariots.”

* LUIS PENA is the news assistant and may be reached at (949)

574-4298 or by e-mail at luis.pena@latimes.com.