Today we’d like to introduce you to Bodeck Luna Hernandez.
Every artist has a unique story. Can you briefly walk us through yours?
I’ve been creating art since I was a child starting with tagging my parents’ cabinet doors when I ran out of pages and spaces to draw in coloring books. I used to make these World War II soldiers, robots and monster’s drawings and sell them in early grade school for lunch which later transitioned to making my classmates’ art homework’s for money. My family then moved from Manila Philippines to Long Beach, CA going into High School. By that time, everyone was already really good at skateboarding so I got into street art until I signed up for my first painting class in my senior year. I cancelled my application to UCLA and CSULB as an English major to explore art by attending Long Beach City College. Being an immigrant, I had to work to sustain living costs and had been creating art ever since I dropped out of college.
Please tell us about your art.
Whether be murals or gallery pieces, I’d love to describe my artwork as a vessel or a time machine that takes the viewers backwards and forwards in time with me. Nostalgia is a heavy underlying theme from my childhood – contrasting socio-economic lifestyles of people I witnessed growing up in Tondo, Manila, vivid colors inspired by Jeepneys and cheap plastic toys, from shanties to buildings to lush tropical islands and pop culture and visual aesthetics from that time. While exploring the relationship between nostalgia, social empowerment, and modern society’s heavy reliance on disposable technology and consumerism, pixels replace the expired human recollections as I paint layers on top of previous underlying images with spray cans and brushstrokes.
The process is repeated once again to emulate the sensory habit of replaying a distant visual memory of forgetting and remembrance while maintaining a unified composition through design. This practice of push and pull between rendered figures, bright colors, blurred images, patterns and repainting brings us to the present and visions of better hopes for the future and where we’re going as citizens of this world. This method allows me to create public pieces that are both personal and site-specific to inspire the audience of that neighborhood. For private and public murals, I ensure to research whom would be impacted by the work so the audience could spark a dialogue between each other and inspire a sense of community and pride within the area.
As an artist, how do you define success and what quality or characteristic do you feel is essential to success as an artist?
There are so many versions of success from different viewpoints. Most artists could say that success equals making humorous amounts of money and having your art be seen everywhere, product collaborations, having collectors bidding over your work while museums and various foundations are writing grants for your future projects. That would be a nice dream come true! For me, success could be measured in being grateful to wake up and create, make a living through art with the goals of inspiring others, giving voice to the oppressed by being in solidarity with them and evoking community.
I would rather empower too many people than to make too much money through my art. As far as essential qualities or characteristics for a successful artist, for me that would encompass: being yourself, being different, don’t be the next version of a successful somebody, making sure you’re happy with your work and it comes from an honest place, making art that means something and most importantly – maintaining the hunger to learn. The more you learn, the better you can tell your story which could also push others to share theirs. I’m not the one to say I’m successful so I guess you’ll have to create your own definition of success at the end of the road. Maybe you personally develop those traits along the way.
How or where can people see your work? How can people support your work?
I am forever thankful for Instagram as a platform for keeping my fans updated with current shows, I’m in whether it be a group show in a gallery or a self-funded DIY show. The murals can be seen around Long Beach, Orange County and LA. I try to update my website the best I can so people can find them.
Contact Info:
- Website: bodeckluna.com
- Phone: (562) 704-8138
- Email: bodeckluna562@gmail.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bodeckluna/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bodeckhernadezart/
Image Credit:
Bodeck Hernandez
Heather Lemmon
PowWow! Long Beach!
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