CALIFORNIA COLOUR
The artist and the Holy Roller
When Armando Lerma was first hired to paint the walls of the soonto-open Holy Roller restaurant off Whyte Avenue, the California artist wasn’t sure how it would all go down … or up, specifically.
Architectural schematics were beamed to his studio in sunny Coachella Valley, but Lerma says, “I really have to see what I’m working with,” meaning face-to-face.
One trip to Canada later and, “There’s still a lot of construction going on,” he explains as hard hats bustle about the coalescing food venue. “I didn’t know what colours were happening — so I just went for it.”
Indeed he did, with stylish, gorgeous and meaningful results. The colours are delicious and soulful — including rusty oranges, turquoise half-buried in the dirt and a ’50s-grad-dress pink conquering numerous feature walls inside the new spot at 8222 Gateway Blvd. Locally sourced bits of pop culture are embedded in the walls, painted both classically and in street style with spray paint. It’s a triumph of cool.
Fact is, Lerma’s art ended up shifting the restaurant’s overall palette. During the interview, Holy Roller co-owner Michael Maxxis and his team were considering new swatches of upholstery based on the painter’s improvised colours.
In terms of respect for an artist in a business setting, that’s unusual and awesome.
“We’re in the process at this very second of changing our booth fabric to match the panther artwork,” Maxxis says. “Honestly, the most important thing is him setting the tone. We work around it.”
After 10 days, Lerma made iconic images of migratory birds, the aforementioned panther and a prison-tattooed, shirtless tough guy wielding a knife under the phrase “Oh Lord my mistake.” These wild beings are now permanent residents of Canada, though the work would easily be at home in a Los Angeles gallery.
Much of Lerma’s work has shown in such places, in fact — including at exhibitions in New York, Tokyo and Stockholm — and his work in L.A. is part of the internationally acclaimed art duo the Date Farmers.
The pair emerged from Indio, Calif., where Lerma’s family has lived and worked since the ’50s as, go figure, date farmers. For almost 20 years, the Date Farmers were active in the L.A. gallery scene. They painted the cover of fashionable art magazine Juxtapoz and even created an official poster for the first Obama campaign — reading “Cambio” (change) — commissioned in the same wave of imagery as the ubiquitous Shepard Fairey “Hope” poster.
Last year, the Date Farmers built nine-metre painted sculptures outside the gates of Coachella, a pair of Chicano giants dubbed “Sneaking into the Show.” It was a statement about how most of the people in Indio, largely migrant and working class, would be hard-pressed to afford the US$375 weekend festival pass. This work earned even more international attention.
Yet, the longtime collaboration recently ended. Lerma shrugs, saying, “It’s the oldest story in the book: The band broke up.”
In the fallout, Maxxis had so much trouble finding Lerma, he issued a bounty.
“I had to hire another street artist I know from L.A. and paid him $1,000 to sort of be a sleuth and track him down. There was no contact information anywhere, not Facebook, no Twitter.
“He found him living in the middle of the desert.”
Maxxis, co-owner of El Cortez and Have Mercy, is also a filmmaker who made the video for Elle King’s Ex’s & Oh’s, and recently shot the feature-length Puppy Love in Edmonton.
“Three years ago, designing El Cortez, I began to research street art,” he says. “The Date Farmers immediately became my favourite. I’ve been using their work as a reference in El Cortez and Have Mercy. I’ve used it in pitches on music videos.
“There’s something certain artists have that’s ineffable. A certain guitar player can hit a certain note, make your hair stand up. As soon as I saw it, it spoke to me. It’s raw, it’s gritty, it’s textured. There’s a primal element to it, an on-thestreet quality.”
Around Lerma’s desert studio live coyotes and roadrunners, lizards and snakes — even the odd scorpion. Though, the artist says, “When I was a kid there used to be a lot more.”
Pointing at the finished panther behind him, Lerma notes, “I’ve been doing animals for a while. It’s a reference to nature, what’s going on in culture now, Western society … how everything ’s getting screwed up.”
That’s certainly a political statement — though as a person of Mexican ancestry, Lerma sees the racism down in the United States as being a lot bigger, and a lot older, than any ripples Donald Trump’s been making in the bathwater.
“I’m not blaming Trump. I don’t think it’s worse. It’s always been what it’s been, since the beginning. It’s business as usual for the government and our situation.”
As an international exchange, Lerma is happy with the opportunity to make some art north of the border, his first time up here.
“It’s cool it’s here in Canada,” he says. “I kind of see the work I do as an artist as bridging a cultural gap. Maybe get people to think about people from somewhere else.”
Maxxis sees the import of Lerma’s work as part of a larger movement, including the big exterior wall mural by Cleon Peterson facing the farmers market he commissioned last year.
If all goes well, Holy Roller will open in time for the Fringe.
“I’ve always wanted to live in a neighbourhood that’s textured, visually. A labyrinth: a place to explore,” Maxxis says. “The most rewarding thing for me is when I see kids looking up at the artwork, marvelling at it.
“And I know,” he smiles, “that kid’s getting a little bit weirder.”