The name of Raúl Baltazar has been coming off my tongue for the last few weeks. Ever since Oliver Shipley sent me the first tapes of the artist and himself having an initial conversation, I have been trying to understand all the things that sprout from Raúl, from the way he drinks cinnamon coffee to postcolonialism and an appreciation for children fools who think he’s full of it. I went from being amazed by this artist’s rhetorical questions, to laughing at his jokes, to eating Oaxacan mole at his side. Before meeting Raúl, I was struck by the ease, intimacy, and eloquence with which he spoke of prisons, post-colonialism, and art as a political tool. After meeting Raúl Baltazar, I realized that he exemplifies the type of artist who is deeply committed to theory through practice. It would be wrong to say that you take yourself too seriously. He does not, he is calm, cheerful and quick to smile. But he does see the role of the artist as one that is critical to social change.

Baltazar is aware of his politics from the beginning. “We have to be careful in the ways we are used as artists. Artists are powerful, we design dollar bills. It is important to recognize the ways we can serve the community as storytellers and teachers.” When asked about his most memorable project, he recalls his experience working with Los Angeles juvenile prisoners. Baltazar facilitated art classes at the largest juvenile detention center in the United States, right here in Los Angeles. The artist delves deeper, rhetorically investigating the ways in which criminalization is linked to our (post) colonial foundations. He seems genuinely concerned about living in a city that incarcerates more youth than any other city in America. Baltazar suggests that he too could have been easily locked up had he not found some direction as being creative. However, where there is conflict, this artist finds possibilities. Baltazar himself reminds me of the artist who works to heal society; The one that somehow embraces the chaos and gives it a kind of beautiful sense. Consequently, Baltazar’s murals have intentionally transformed the prison-like architecture of Johnnie L. Cochran Jr. High School into what now appears to be a colorful Aztec temple. Where once high school was a setting for architectural containment, it now seems more like a site of intellectual and spiritual learning.

Baltazar was in the Navy. He grew up in Los Angeles in the late 70s and 80s and found a way to escape. But if you’re from LA, even if you hate LA, you find ways to go back. Los Angeles, he muses, is the kind of place that even when you’re so fed up with its highways, its snobs, and its smog, you return and the city surprises you with its well-hidden secrets and exciting art and culture hotspots. Los Angeles is undeniably dynamic. It is a city that seeps into your flesh and bones. It becomes a part of you that you cannot shake, continually opening up new stories.

Los Angeles for Baltazar as a child was magical. The murals on her neighborhood walls poured into her psyche and her bloodstream. They became part of his cultural environment and his identity as an artist. The images created by Los Angeles artists have had a lasting effect on Raúl. He has been inspired by the (Chicano) movement to recover public space through murals. Remember as a child he was amazed by the East LA Streetscapers murals on Daily and Broadway, and also by a graffiti-covered Tweety Bird wearing a hat. His politically minded parents were also an influence. It has flowered from these seeds. His Los Angeles roots have remained essential to the way he works in the community as a self-aware political artist.

Raúl Baltazar will tell you that he is influenced by the folkloric stories transmitted from the lips of his grandfather in Chihuahua, Mexico. He infuses his art with cultural and spiritual symbols from around the world. In his work you can find Buddhist allegories as easily as you could find something essentially Aztec. In his murals, we see dragons, monkeys, elephants, and trees of life, all archetypal figures who tell stories about knowledge, deception, falsehood, and spiritual truth. He uses the idea of ​​acting and the “setting” of life in one of his murals on the grounds of JLC High School, filled with gloomy Angelenos in the dark night. Water somehow drips or flows through his work, referencing the unconscious nature of knowledge and stories passed down from generation to generation. Much of his work reinvents the folkloric tradition. In fact, one of his JLC murals is literally infused with “good luck” magic. Raúl told the JLC children that if they touched the mural, they would have good luck. The mural itself became an interactive performance piece in that part of its meaning became the magical luck that would come from touching it. Baltazar does not create flat, lifeless objects. Create art that is alive and breathe, interactive and transformative. The Good Luck Mural is a great example of the ways in which art can acquire spiritual qualities or, as Raúl puts it, it can become a “sanctuary or a place that will revitalize you in some way.”

A healer is a community healer. What is compelling about Baltazar is that he is aware of the ways an artist can work as a community healer, suturing or speaking of the hurts, losses and possibilities in our communities in powerful ways. The mere fact that Baltazar feels connected to the community in Los Angeles is telling. He says he’s not just working for himself; He tells us how he wants to use his medium as an artist to mend the spirit of the community and transmit the tradition of storytelling. The murals speak loudly, reflecting the stories that resonate for the communities that live vibrantly within the margins. Even more than telling / painting political stories of struggle and survival, Baltazar’s murals function as temples and gathering spaces for the Los Angeles community. I am also sure that hundreds and even thousands of children will be influenced by Raúl’s murals, just as he was influenced by the murals he saw as a child in Los Angeles.

The figure of the cheater often comes into play in Baltazar’s work. Raúl says: “The trickster makes you question what you believe and whether you really believe it or not, and he does it in an imaginative way that is part of folklore. Those are the stories that have been passed down from generation to generation. And, nobody had They had to pay to get it printed or go through a lot of hurdles. It just happened. They kept getting revitalized because they had agency, because they taught something, because they were relevant to people’s lives. That’s what I’m trying to do with my work. Make it relevant today. “

In many ways, Raúl Baltazar’s role as an artist and cheater breaks through and defies categories. He works radically to resist being tagged by any type of artist. Baltazar is both an interpreter, painter, filmmaker, sculptor, muralist and illustrator. Focusing on his wall art here is a choice I made primarily to demonstrate the ways in which he engages the community. Certainly, however, Baltazar is a tradition-defying artist who seeks to identify art and artists as “Chicano” or “postmodern” or “conceptual” or “painter.” In fact, more than anything, Raúl Baltazar is a teacher, cultural worker, and healer in artist form.