PBS News Hour

GEOFF BENNETT: Changing lives and creating art.

Special correspondent Mike Cerre looks at a tried-and-true program in East Los Angeles and the forces behind it.

It's part of our arts and culture series, Canvas.

FABIAN DEBORA, Homeboy Art Academy: It's beautiful.

Hi.

MIKE CERRE: One of Fabian Debora's first art commissions was this mural on a neighborhood grocery store in East Los Angeles while a recovering drug addict on probation.

FABIAN DEBORA: There were times when I was sick in my addiction that God will give me a job opportunity, paint my store, paint the letters here, paint some flowers there, just to keep me and the art also away from doing stealing or anything.

MIKE CERRE: Today, he's a celebrated Chicano muralist and this year's recipient of a National Endowment of the Arts Heritage Fellowship.

FABIAN DEBORA: Art is a powerful tool.

It can make you or it could break you.

MIKE CERRE: A survivor of the all-too-familiar East Los Angeles cycle of a challenging childhood due to immigration, drugs, gangs and family incarceration issues, art has been Fabian's escape to a much different life for himself and his family.

FABIAN DEBORA: Every time life will seem hard and dark, or I will feel out of place, I will go under a coffee table and I will begin to create my own worlds to escape my reality.

That's when I found art to be more than just a gift.

It was sort of like a big brother.

MIKE CERRE: He also discovered a guardian angel in his parish priest, Father Greg Boyle, who encouraged him to stick with his art and defended him in juvenile courts.

FABIAN DEBORA: Father Greg just kept accepting and embracing and receiving me regardless of where I was at in my life.

No matter what, he never shut the door.

MIKE CERRE: Father Greg Boyle went on to create Homeboy Industries, where Fabian worked, along with other gang members, addicts and ex-cons, searching and working towards a new life, starting with an industrial bakery and retraining program, a popular cafe that expanded to one at the Los Angeles International Airport, and a free tattoo removal service.

Homeboy Industries has become the country's largest gang intervention and reentry program.

Fabian Debora got father Boyle's blessing and Homeboy Industries' support to fulfill his dream of running his own art academy and support group.

FABIAN DEBORA: Once we do that, think about where you're at in your current life now in this moment, because every day is a new beginning.

You can always turn the page, or we can dwell in the past and suffocate.

So, today, we're turning the page.

MIKE CERRE: The Homeboy Art Academy is Fabian's art studio and vehicle for sharing his passion for art with former gang members and parolees, like he once was.

FABIAN DEBORA: So, if you think about the tradition of arts practices and how art brings people together in creativity and community, it's always been a healing method.

Art has a universal language that can be embraced by anyone.

And, in this, the arts helps drop the defenses.

MIKE CERRE: Shanker Davis, on parole for a hit-and-run charge, is learning how to make and design custom T-shirts.

SHANKER DAVIS, Homeboy Art Academy: Keep Scoring.

My Web is called Keep Scoring Clothes, because you -- in this life, you have got to keep going, keep going.

You just can't stop.

MIKE CERRE: So is Keep Scoring the name of your fashion business now?

SHANKER DAVIS: Yes, that's my business.

(CROSSTALK) MIKE CERRE: OK. Did you ever -- had you had your sewn or silk screen before this?

SHANKER DAVIS: Never.

I never touched a sewing machine.

I never touched a silk screen, never.

FABIAN DEBORA: When growing up, graffiti art, there's the '80s.

Hip-hop culture was at its best.

So graffiti art is what I was attracted to as another form of expression.

Although graffiti art was also considered vandalism.

MIKE CERRE: Father Boyle helped make Fabian's graffiti art street legal by setting him up with an internship with Los Angeles' premier street muralist.

The Getty Museum included Fabian's work in their Black Book exhibit of graffiti artists called the Book of Friends.

FABIAN DEBORA: Chicano art is not just a movement, but it's also a form of activism.

And Chicano art allows us to convey messaging and amplify the voices of our people.

And we don't come with restrictions when it comes to Chicano art.

We don't fall for what is art and what is an art.

We paint, create, and amplify the voice of our people.

And that is the beauty of Chicanismo, of Chicano art.

MIKE CERRE: So, growing up in East Los Angeles, you didn't have any formal training.

You had no reference for the Baroque, Renaissance art.

FABIAN DEBORA: To me, it's important to utilize those things in the Baroque, Renaissance style, because they are elegant, they're glorious, these paintings, but yet the people can relate to it.

MIKE CERRE: His latest exhibition featured his interpretations of the 16th century Italian painter Caravaggio, known for his intense and often violent realism.

FABIAN DEBORA: The way I relate to Caravaggio is because of his lived experience and my lived experience.

There's a lot of commonalities there, being oppressed and suppressed for the person that he has become.

He was considered a thug.

That's me.

So then how do I take Caravaggio imagery or storylines and reground them and connect them back to my community?

And maybe next, I challenge Michelangelo.

That's just the way I'm thinking right now.

MIKE CERRE: Why not?

FABIAN DEBORA: Why not?

And that's my next move.

And if you know, I have all the 16 chapel books and Michelangelo books there.

Already doing my research.

MIKE CERRE: So you're ready to take the Sistine Chapel, bring it to East Los Angeles?

FABIAN DEBORA: You would be surprised, and I hope that you come to see the outcome of this body of work.

MIKE CERRE: Walking the talk is still very much the Homeboy way.

And Fabian Debora's art keeps him climbing for the sky.

For the "PBS News Hour," I'm Mike Cerre in East Los Angeles.