Rosa Cabrera grew up in South Central LA with her mom and four other siblings. She has that “still waters run deep” personality about her, and her art is proof. Rosa doesn’t necessarily go out into the street to paint. She paints in her notebooks, on cloth bags and canvases. However, the style and lettering she draws resembles street art bombs. She learned this art style from friends and family.
When I come into her house Rosa is laying on the bed with a plush pillow on her stomach. Yoti hints it’s that time of the month again. We all groan. Walking into her house has the opposite illusion of walking out of the movie theater. I had been standing outside her door wearing sunglasses to protect my eyes from the bright sun and walked into an extremely dark room. They were watching the new Netflix show “Orange is the New Black.”
WHEN DID YOU START DRAWING?
“I started liking surrealism.
That’s when I started painting.
I started hanging out with Erick Garcia and he did graffiti.
I met other people that did the same thing.
My sister’s boyfriend used to have this art book with different kinds of styles and words.
I would try to learn the styles.
My dad used to draw. He was really good. He also did tattoos. Well I didn’t really meet him, but my sister would tell me.
My brother draws really good as well.
Also, my sister Christina used to draw animated characters.”
Rosa says she doesn’t really have a fixed style. Her portraits, her designs, her letters, and her canvases say the same thing. One could attribute her broad range of artistic style to her influences: the friends and family she took after.
“After seeing them drawing, I wanted to do it too.”
I can hear an ice cream truck playing music outside her house.
WHY DIDN’T YOU END UP TRANSFERRING YOUR ART ONTO THE STREETS?
“I guess I don’t really do it because I haven’t practiced enough that I think it would be okay.
I would go with Erik sometimes and I would just see him do it.
It’s just like that’s not my thing.
I just like doing canvases, paper, and bags.”
She doesn’t paint with spray cans. Being a writer or street artist hasn’t appealed to nineteen-year-old Rosa. She says she prefers to create at her own pace and in the comfort of her own elements such as in her home. Although she doesn’t directly participate in street art subculture, her artistic pursuits represent traces of that subculture.
“It’s difficult. You have to practice a lot.
In here, I can draw right then and there.
Having to go and do it out in the street you have to get permission.
If you catch the wrong block people will come and kick your ass. If you’re not from the street or the same hood people will try and kick your ass.
Erik would tell me ‘I got a spot for us.’
And I’d be like ‘What do you mean? Can’t you just go anywhere and do it?’
You have to ask for permission.
Sometimes Tron would be like let’s go at one in the morning and at night. I’d be like ‘I have to sneak out and be careful that no one hears me. What if we have to run? I’m a bad runner’.”
People like what Rosa draws. She was selling shirts for a while.
“I wouldn’t say I have a style. I just put things together.
I used to draw in class sometimes and they would see it and ask ‘Could you draw me this, could you draw me that?’
I kinda don’t like it when people tell me to draw something for them because I feel pressured.
I start thinking it has to be perfect for them.”
In these cases, she says that she starts seeing her art as someone else’s product that she has to perfect rather than her own creation.
Again, as with street art, she says she feels she can’t do things at her own pace.
“When I feel like drawing, I do it. but when people tell me to draw I don’t want to do it anymore.”
She expresses that her creative spark and drive vanishes.
She doesn’t draw for others.
“It was something different before.
Sometimes I see designs or pictures that other people do, like famous artists, and I want to do it because I know I’m not going to be able to afford the real thing.”
Rosa shows me her sketch book which is filled with cartoons, names, and other colorful drawings. She talks about her drawings.
“They remind me of feelings, of certain things in my life.
Like this one, I was watching an anime.
The legs aren’t part of her legs.
I feel like I need to draw something.
Something pops into my mind. A time I that I remember and I just want to draw something that’s going to remind me about it.”
For a while she had her own business gig going on. She was painting on shirts and selling them. She describes how she got the idea back when she was talking to Yoti, her best friend, during a sleep over.
HOW DID YOU GET THE IDEA TO START SELLING SHIRTS WITH YOUR OWN DESIGNS?
“We were texting at one in the morning and we were like ‘I’m bored’.”
They were texting under the same roof, but Rosa says that it was because they were sleeping in different rooms. Yoti slept in the couch and Rosa slept in her room which she shares with her mom.
‘I know.’
She explains that when she’s on Tumblr or anywhere else on the internet, she’ll see cool designs that won’t necessarily be sold on shirts, and she wanted to make those type of designs a possibility.
“I wanted different designs on my shirt, different, weird stuff that I was obviously not going to be able to find at a clothing store.
I was like ‘I should start making shirts,’ and I started thinking about stencils.
‘I should start making stencils and put them on shirts. We should go tomorrow to downtown and buy the shirts and the paint’.”
WHY DID YOU STOP SELLING SHIRTS?
“It’s hard when you don’t have an actual machine.
People started asking for a lot of shirts.
I wasn’t even buying the right paint.
It washed off.
I needed to stop. I didn’t want people paying me money and getting a crappy shirt in the end.”
In the end, she ended up making ten shirts.
She described that project as hard. She didn’t have the right equipment to complete the increasing orders people were requesting or the detailed stencils they wanted.
“I had to stay up all night trying to paint. I was going to school as well and trying to look for a job.
My brother told me he was going to get me a machine. I didn’t get it.”
She laughs as she says she knew he would forget.
She is self-critical about her art. She says she paints like a kindergarten child because she describes her creations as simple and not detailed.
“I feel people wouldn’t like it
There’s already people out there who actually do good art.
I’d rather not.
But when other people say the same thing, I say ‘No, you should do it, it doesn’t fucking matter what other people think’.”
WHEN DID YOU START PURSUING ART?
“I’ve always liked painting like in kindergarten and doing finger painting.”
It wasn’t until seventh grade when her art teacher encouraged to continue to paint.
“She’d buy me canvases because I couldn’t afford them.”
WHAT WOULD YOU TELL OTHER GIRLS SUCH AS YOURSELF WHO ARE PURSUING A PASSION FOR ART?
“Go for it. There’s no rules to it.
I think there’s a lot of girls people don’t know about. People see more guys doing it.
That doesn’t mean there’s not girls doing it.
I would say girls are a little more shy.
They don’t show off about it.
Guys want to show off, make it more of a competition.
I guess that’s why they’re more advertised sometimes.”
almendra 