‘Estevan Oriol & Teen Angel, Dedicated to You’ is an homage to L.A.'s vibrant Chicano history

As I followed Chicano photographer Estevan Oriol around the gallery, lovers of art, reminiscent hearts and curious passersby on La Brea Avenue filtered in to quietly admire the curating talents of David De Baca and Bryan Ray Turcotte in “Estevan Oriol & Teen Angel, Dedicated to You,” which will inhabit Roger Gastman’s Beyond the Streets’ Los Angeles gallery until September 15. 

Bringing together two of the most influential forces who have documented and shaped Chicano culture, “Dedicated to You” is not only an homage to the vibrant city of L.A. and its community but also the groundbreaking and illustrious careers of Oriol and Teen Angel. 

A hip hop club bouncer turned tour manager for various L.A. rap groups, including Cypress Hill and House of Pain, who then transitioned to a career as a  photographer and director, Oriol, 57, grew an affinity for photography while traveling the world. It was in the early 1990s when his father, Eriberto Oriol, a community activist and renowned photographer, gave him an old, bulky camera that he began documenting his life on the road. 

“It wasn’t cool to take pictures back then [though],” Oriol told CALÓ News. “You never saw me with a camera around my neck.”

Despite the medium’s lack of popularity at the time, almost 20 years later, Oriol is a beloved photographer who has spent his career chronicling the juxtaposition between the gritty and glamorous sides of L.A. culture through portraits of famous athletes, artists, celebrities and musicians as well as Latino urban, gang and tattoo culture. 

Additionally, Oriol has directed media projects for MTV and Apple as well as music videos for Eminem, Cypress Hill, Blink 182, Snoop Dogg and Xzibit and has also published best-selling books “L.A. Woman,” “L.A. Portraits” and “This is Los Angeles.” His work has also been featured in multiple publications and television shows. 

The photographer’s art not only depicts his objects through a raw and intimate lens but also uncovers the true beauty of L.A. and its people in a way that allows for Oriol’s admiration of the city that raised him to shine through. This, along with the impact of Teen Angel on his artwork, can be seen throughout the exhibition. 

“I told Roger about Estevan's connection with [Teen Angel] and a year or two after I met [Gastman], he approached me with the idea of doing a show with Estevan Oriol and Teen Angel’s Magazine,” De Baca said. “I thought it was a perfect fit because they both saw the beauty in the Varrios [of California] that other people didn't see. Now, it’s becoming mainstream. It's cool now. When Teen Angel first started doing this, and when Esteban first started shooting these photos, it wasn't cool.” 

Born in 1939 in Lawrenceburg, Indiana, Teen Angel was artistically inclined from as young as six years old. Growing up during and post-World War II, he was heavily influenced by machinery such as cars, planes, ships and motorcycles. In the 1940s and 50s, Teen Angel became fascinated by the lowrider culture in California, which originated in Mexican American communities and became a symbol of creativity and Latino identity. After moving to Southern California in the 70s, Teen Angel was working as a painter for the city of Rialto when Lowrider Magazine launched in 1977. 

After submitting his art, he became  a writer and resident artist for the magazine, eventually venturing into publishing and creating Teen Angel’s Magazine in 1980. 

“Teen Angel’s Magazine was different because it wasn't just dedicated to cars,” De Baca told CALÓ News. “It was dedicated to the whole Varrio lifestyle of teenagers at the time. It was dedicated to the clothing style, the graffiti style, the cars and the music. It was more of a lifestyle magazine rather than just automotive-focused. Teen Angel’s was a little cruder than Lowrider Magazine, and not as professional. [Teen Angel] liked that crude style, the rough edge style of the magazine.”

In print until the early 2000s, Teen Angel’s Magazine focused on life in the Varrios (spelled with a V to reflect the exhibit page) of California as well as Arizona, Texas and New Mexico through artwork, poems, photographs, dedications and articles. Where others saw destruction in these communities, Teen Angel saw nothing but beauty and life in the “colorful murals of the Varrio, the unique dress style of cholos and cholas, the camaraderie of homeboys and their gangs, the graffiti on the walls, the lowriders that cruised the streets and of course, the beautiful, black and gray style tattoos that adorned Chicanos,” according to Beyond the Streets.

Not only did Teen Angel’s Magazine give a voice and an outlet to gangsters who were incarcerated or young girls looking for or missing their loves, but it also catered to a generation of teenagers as no other publication had before. 

“Nobody else was catering to this culture. Being from Southern California and not coming from a family that had money, when I was a kid, I didn't know what was happening in other cities or other states,” De Baca said. “People from the Varrios didn't come from money, so they weren’t traveling and taking their kids to other areas. Their only access outside of their cities was via Teen Angel’s Magazine. They could see dudes and chicks from other neighborhoods and how they dressed, the style of graffiti they wrote and the kind of cars that were cruising those streets. It became this social media of that time.”

Best friends until Teen Angel passed in 2015, De Baca became a fan of the lowrider artist when he first saw his talents in Lowrider Magazine when he was 12 years old. Though lowriding was frowned upon at the time, De Baca was interested in that lifestyle and began depicting it through his own art, inspired by Teen Angel’s work, along with his history lessons on the culture. With encouragement from his family, De Baca pursued a career in the art industry and curated his first exhibit, “Bajitos y Suavecitos,” which set attendance records in 2004 at the San Diego Automotive Museum. 

After Teen Angel’s passing, as a way of memorializing his workspace the way he left it, De Baca, the artist’s closest friend and director of his estate, asked Oriol to capture Teen Angel’s art studio and living space. Nine years later, when Gastman approached De Baca about the idea for “Dedicated to You,” he knew Oriol was the perfect Chicano artist to collaborate with. 

“Teen Angel saw the beauty in the streets where other people saw a problem with graffiti, with the way people dressed and the style of clothes they wore,” De Baca said. “Teen Angel saw beauty and you can see it in the covers of the magazine The connection between Teen Angel’s Magazine and Estevan is very clear because Estevan, as a photographer, started shooting those same scenes that Teen Angel was drawing and [featured] in his magazine. Estevan saw the beauty in the grit of the streets and he started to capture it on film, and that made this great connection between Teen Angel and Estevan.”

The connection between the two artists is visible throughout the entire gallery with both their art and mementos interwoven into the exhibition effortlessly. As soon as you walk through the doors, viewers feel like they have immediately stepped into an issue of Teen Angel’s Magazine with walls lined entirely with Teen Angel’s signature border of bright, red roses and cartoonish writing. 

Welcomed first by a beautiful blown-up contact sheet of some of Oriol’s many raw portraits of the streets of L.A. and his re-imagining of Teen Angel’s “SILENT SIGNALS,” your eyes cannot help but drift to the case filled with all 200 issues of Teen Angel’s Magazine and the display of 60 to 80 vibrantly colored covers. 

“Once the magazine became popular in the Varrios, a lot of guys in prison started sending in their artwork to the magazine, and a lot of the artwork was done in pen and pencil or black and gray ink,” De Baca said. “They didn't have access to paint or colored pencils, so Teen Angel would add color to it with colored pencils, markers, watercolors or acrylics. Then, he would add a border of roses and the Teen Angel’s logo to it. Each one of those pieces on the wall is a collaboration between Teen Angel and the artist. They became collaborations in that way and it's cool how these Chicano and lowrider artists were able to get recognition through the magazine.” 

Viewers not only get to see a recreation of Teen Angel’s workspace, with his original desk and glasses, but they also get a first look at a collection of rare artifacts and original works from Teen Angel's archive, as well as select pieces from Turcotte's extensive collection, such as sculptures and ephemera. Oriol’s beloved “L.A. Fingers, 1995,” “Gangster Love, 18th Street” and “Fuck Love” photos along with amazingly meticulous drawings sent to the photographer from incarcerated individuals are strung along a wall covered in dedications sent into Teen Angel’s Magazine. 

While dedications to loved ones had only been done on radio shows, which became popular in 1943 when Art Laboe became the first DJ to welcome his listeners’ song requests, according to Oriol, Teen Angel’s Magazine was the first to bring dedications to print, which ties in the exhibition’s title, “Dedicated to You.” Before dating apps and social media, individuals would send in their pictures and addresses looking for other potential singles interested in dating. 

“I've spoken to many people who met their significant other, their husband or their wife, through Teen Angel’s Magazine,” De Baca said. “They’d start writing to each other and then you'd see dedications. Even if you were boyfriend and girlfriend and you lived in the same neighborhood, a way to show your love, if you were a girl, you’d write [your man] a dedication, and it would come out in Teen Angel’s Magazine. Teen Angel started making stationery pages where people were able to tear out pages and write letters to their loved ones if they weren't in the same city. ‘Dedicated to You’ is the basis of the show.”

De Baca not only hopes to ensure that the impact of lowrider and Chicano art continues to resonate and inspire people, but for Chicano artists today who are unfamiliar with Teen Angel to learn about his work and his fight against the mainstream media to change the opinions of L.A. and Varrio culture. “He laid the foundation for what they're doing now. Teen Angel had to struggle to do what he was doing and to show the beauty in what most people saw as grittiness. It took a lot of effort.” 

De Baca continued, “No distributor wanted to touch [Teen Angel’s Magazine] because they felt the content of the magazine wasn't mainstream. You couldn’t go to a supermarket and buy the magazine because they wouldn't carry it,” he said. “The only places that sold the magazine were mom-and-pop shops in the Varrio. Teen Angel used to deliver the magazine as his own distributor. He deserves recognition and respect for what he did and for the people who are now making a living doing it because he was doing it when it wasn't accepted by the mainstream public.” 

Though Teen Angel’s work was not appreciated by everyone at the time, “Now, 30 years later, it’s looked at as fine art,” Oriol said. This is exactly how his art is perceived by all who walk into the exhibition, by longtime fans of Teen Angel’s art as well as Chicanos who remember Teen Angel’s Magazine like it was yesterday, to art lovers who can’t help but smile as they become acquainted for the first time. 

“When you see his art, there's some realism to it but there are cartoon-like features to it,” De Baca said. “His goal was to bring lightheartedness. [Teen Angel] always wanted to get a smile out of the viewer or bring some happiness to them. He was a compulsive artist. He couldn't stop himself from creating and that's what brought him joy. Putting it out into the magazine was to make people happy–through meeting their loved ones, writing letters to each other and seeing the art. I hope that people can appreciate it and get some joy out of it because that's what he wanted for people, was to be happy.”

As viewers began to notice just who was giving me a quiet, yet enthusiastic, tour of the exhibition, it became clear that the photographer’s love for L.A. is reciprocated tenfold as each one pensively approached Oriol to ask questions.. From speaking to lovers of his work to seeing Chicanos and Angelenos experience their home chronicled and treated with care through both his legacy and Teen Angel’s means a lot to him. “That means your art is talking to someone. To me, good art brings out some kind of emotion,” he said. “This is what every artist strives for, to be in a high-end gallery for me. For me, it doesn’t get any better than this.” 

As Teen Angel’s Magazine grew in the '80s and '90s, Teen Angel was passed onto his two sons, Johnny and David “Payaso” Holland, who are continuing their father’s legacy today. Oriol also hopes to travel this exhibition into museums throughout the United States as well as other countries in order to depict the beauty that is Chicano art and lowrider culture, which has been instrumental in the art world. “We’re going to try to make [this exhibition] bigger,” Oriol said, after signing numerous pieces and merch items. “[Bring it] to places where people already like this culture … Europe, France, Brazil, Mexico. It would be cool for everyone to see L.A. [like this].” 

The photographer wishes the late Teen Angel were here to witness the exhibition and the love and appreciation it’s receiving. Though Teen Angel was very private and reclusive during his life, De Baca remembers bringing some pieces of the artist’s work that were incorporated in an exhibit he curated years back to his home once it ended so that he could see the finished product himself. 

“He had never seen [his art] framed in those museum-quality frames, so he was blown away to see it presented in that way, in frames with glass,” De Baca said. “He was pumped. He had a lot of confidence in me to carry forward his vision, so he would have walked into [this] gallery and been very happy with what he saw. He would have been blown away to see his art.”

“Estevan Oriol & Teen Angel, Dedicated to You” is open to the public Wednesday through Sunday from 11 A.M. to 6 P.M. through September 15 at the Beyond the Streets L.A. gallery on La Brea Avenue.