Every other Saturday and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., artist Armando Hernandez Elizarraras parks by the North Park bookstore, Verbatim Books, and the mural he created on its wall at 30th Street and North Park Way. He arranges a table in front of the mural to display portraits, prints, bookmarks and stickers. Families pause, consider the explosion of colors bursting from the wall in images of books, commercial products, dinosaurs, robots, Frankenstein and other monsters and fic-tional characters — a fantasy world separate from the crowded coffee shops and the rising traffic. The sun bears down, gets absorbed into Armando’s black T-shirt and shorts. He always wears black or navy blue. White clothes get too dirty, especially when he paints.
He cocks his head, adjusts a portrait of Harriet Tubman. The phrase, I would give every drop of my blood to free them, fills the crease of a shawl wrapped around her shoulders. A red heart and black chains is printed on another fold. The portrait is similar to a series commemorated in prints, stickers and bookmarks sold inside of Verbatim of historic artists and authors reimagined as modern figures with body modifications expressing the heart of their work. Tattoos, piercings and stylized hair il-lustrate aspects of Edgar Allen Poe’s poems and William Shakespeare’s plays.
Near the Tubman portrait stands an oil painting of a blue-gray pigeon with a black cap similar to the one Armando wears. A beard covers part of its chest, not graying like Armando’s beard, but as full. He considers the painting a self portrait. Pigeons exist on the street. Armando exhibits his work on the street. So, he reasons, he is a pigeon.
He stands by his table, keeps to himself. He doesn’t talk much. He doesn’t need to. His work and the mural speak for themselves. It took him two-and-a-half months to complete the mural, working up to 12 hours a day. His quiet manner belies the great sense of accomplishment he feels to have done something so large, the detail of which can be seen from afar and up close. Every day people look at it, take pictures, at all times, day and night, basking in it.
Some people don’t stop and look. He accepts that. He paints for everyone but not everyone may like his work. He gives them the space he would want if he were them. However, should someone ask about the wall he lets them know he painted the mural. They look surprised, happy. What an unex-pected pleasure to meet the artist! They tell him how much they like it, how it propels their imagina-tions. Perhaps their delight will lead to one of them offering a commission.
A child points at the gray, glowering Frankenstein.
“There was a hole that was bugging me, an empty black square so I filled it with Frankenstein,” Armando explains.
A green dinosaur with a helmet catches a man’s attention.
“As I was working I made up stuff,” Armando says. “I added many different things like putting a helmet on a dinosaur that just came to me.”
Women take selfies, posing by a leering Stephen King, his mouth open in a scream between two volumes of his books. Armando watches them. Everyone, he believes, enjoys Stephen King.
He began the mural in September 2021. The owner of Verbatim Books, Justine Epstein, wanted di-nosaurs and robots, a favorite of her younger customers, and of course books, but otherwise she let him design it. What about this? he would ask her. Little by little they figured it out. Armando had enough experience as an artist by then that he knew what had to be done. He was 45. It was as if he had been preparing for this moment his entire life. He had always doodled and sketched as a kid and by the time he reached high school his teachers had noticed his talent. After he graduated, he studied graphic design at Southwestern College in San Diego and later the San Diego Art Institute. He worked for design companies before he branched out on his own in 2011. He composed oil paintings of fish in bright colors and showed them at Kobey’s Sports Arena Swap Meet where he met Justine. A woman approached him one day and commissioned a landscape to commemorate her late father, a novice artist. She gave Armando his paints and brushes which he used to compose a canvas filled with green trees. Mountains rose in the background. Armando has a thing for trees. He never paints houses or people in his landscapes. Her prefers to focus on nature without intru-sion.
In 2015, he presented his work at the Marston House for the Balboa Park Centennial Exhibit. He did two shows and sold seven paintings. Six years later, Justine asked him to exhibit at Verbatim Books. His calm, relaxed manner made him easy to work with and she began to talk to him about the bare, burgundy wall. She had always wanted a mural, of what exactly she didn’t know but some-thing book related and reflective of the store. What do you think? she asked him. Why don’t I paint it for you? Armando said.
Armando used a hydraulic lift and roamed all over the wall as he worked. His brushes translated his thoughts. Orange here, green there, and yellow to make a figure pop. Sometimes he changed his mind, but not often. He painted books as they would appear on a shelf, created collages, inserted VB for Verbatim Books and a can of Radler, a favorite summer drink of the staff. He painted a book for each of Mexico’s three greatest muralists, Jose Clemente Orozco, Diego Rivera and David Al-faro Siqueiros. On a fourth book he placed his own name.
Why not? Some people travel the world painting murals. That’s what he hopes to do. He wakes up early and paints almost every day. His ambition does not overwhelm him. He sees each project as a task he must complete. He tries to limit his influences so he doesn’t imitate other artists. He knows their work but does not focus on it. He wants his art to stand on its own. If he receives a call from Japan or some other country to paint a mural he will know he has achieved success. Until then, he will paint and promote his art and wait for the next commission, the next portrait, the next mural.
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