DOWNTOWN : Art Lesson’s Payoff Is Bigger Than Life

At the ripe old age of 12, Raul Flores has had few opportunities to publicly display his artwork.

But now, everyone who drives down Blake Avenue, down the hill from Dodger Stadium, can see the Skid Row youngster’s painting of the Pink Panther.

Raul’s drawing of the cartoon character is part of a mural that Downtown youths painted on the wall of artist Frank Romero’s studio. Under the tutelage of Romero, an internationally known muralist, the youths from Para los Ninos community center did the mural over the last three months.

The mural was one in a series of art workshops provided by the HeART Project, a 4-year-old nonprofit organization aimed at helping teen-agers.

According to HeART officials, there are more than 50,000 teen-age gang members and close to 26,000 high school dropouts and 25,000 pregnant teen-agers in Los Angeles. The figures illustrate the need for positive alternative activities for youths, organization members say.

So in 1992, the HeART Project decided to shift its focus from health, exercise and art programs for transitional homeless people and recovering substance abusers to concentrate on teen-agers and art.

For the last year, the multiethnic organization has been providing art workshops for the teen-agers who gather at Para los Ninos. Art professionals teach the classes, which include mask-making, silk-screening, dance, drama and poetry and creative writing.

Next year, the project plans to do workshops at the Triangular Church Youth Center in West Adams and the Tri-C School, a school for teen-agers expelled from their regular high schools.

For Romero’s mural workshop, the youths met once a week. Romero first showed them examples of Chicano mural art, done by himself and others, for inspiration. He then had them create their own works.

The results delighted Romero. “Powerful images,” he said as he pointed to drawings of cars, religious icons and flowers on the 50-foot-long mural. One teen-ager drew a sunny island scene, while another rendered an image of street people on Skid Row.

“They really responded to the films I showed them,” Romero said. “And they really liked the idea that here’s me, this guy now in his 50s, doing this still.”

Ignacio Flores, 19, (no relation to Raul) said he appreciates the way Romero, an East Los Angeles native, depicts life in his community. Flores, who painted the gloomy Skid Row image in the mural, said he too finds inspiration in the Downtown neighborhood where he has lived all his life.

“When I paint about the homeless, my message is that we should pay more attention to them . . . try to help them more,” Flores said. “I see people walk by like there’s nothing going on, and these people are starving. It’s something serious, but we don’t even think about it. But I think about it all the time because I grew up around here and it touches me.”

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