DONKEEMOM FINDS HEALING IN ART
Sylvia Roman almost tears up any time she talks about her son Eric. He died 10 years ago.
“To lose a child is something that I haven’t recovered from, and that’s why I work so much. I always have to have my mind and my body occupied,” she says.
After Eric’s death, she started making art. At first, it helped deal with the grief. Now, it’s become something more, as Roman’s art has given her a social-media profile and a career. Some of that credit goes to her other son.
Alex Roman Jr.’s life was totally changed when he started to work closely with his mother on his art. She had introduced him to painting and drawing, and his focus on the craft has built him into a notable creator in the Bayou City who goes the name Donkeeboy.
Alex struck gold by following the flows of Houston culture and reacting to it. He’s still probably most famous for remixing a Tupac magazine cover in a Picasso style. Neither he nor his mother had formal training at an art school.
“It’s reciprocal,” she says in Spanish about how they teach each other. “I teach him what I know from the experience I’ve earned, and he shows me the new things that I’ve never experienced.”
She’s made dozens of images steeped in Mexican popular culture. Her renderings of artist Frida Kahlo, are among her most inspired creations. In one piece, Sylvia painted Kahlo’s boot with her prosthetic leg attached, an image that’s at once playful, disturbing, yet truthful. It was scooped by Houston graffiti artist Gonzo247.
Locally, Sylvia has become Instagram famous; followers of her Donkeemom account can’t wait to meet her at art events she participates in with her son. But she never set out to adopt her son’s art moniker, and she was never heavy on using social media. People just started tagging her as Donkeemom in photos online, and the name made sense. “We’ve always been a team, it’s just something that started spontaneously,” she says.
“Sometimes, art galleries or someone will ask me to bring my mom along, and I say, ‘OK, but you have to pay her,’ ” he jokes.
Her fans come from all walks of life, including Devi “Dev” Brown, the wife of Texans player Duane Brown. It was a Frida Kahlo portrait that Devi couldn’t take her eyes off of. Celebrity clients are nothing new for Donkeemom, though she can’t talk about most of them on the record. In the family’s East End warehouse, on a humid Friday morning, Sylvia is prepping a pair of Timberland boots she says are for Houston rapper and comedian Chingo Bling. The sides and face of the footwear are covered with a portrait of the singer Selena.
Currently, she’s working her way through a loteria series. Perhaps taking a note from her son, she’s remixed the standards by adding a pop-culture twist. The loteria card of the boot, becomes Frida Kahlo’s lace up footwear. The catrin, or Dandy, becomes Salvador Dali, and La Corona, or the crown, gets remade as Basquiat street art.
It’s not often that an artist’s mother becomes more famous than him, but Donkeeboy loves it. His smile is the proof.