Art makes life

One thing that he’s learned, says local artist Crol, is “intention.” When he was 13, local San Diego-based artist Isaias Crow, or Crol, started tagging and bombing his hometown streets of El Paso, Texas.

“My intention was, ‘I’m gonna F-ing ruin this space.’ Like I had this very dark energy towards the way I looked at it,” says Crol.

“I think it was too much of my ego on the wall,” he recalls, noting that his art wasn’t a protest against injustice or political corruption. “It wasn’t about nothing. It was about me, and how I felt inside, and I wanted to project that out. And so I had all this poison that I wanted to distribute.”

Crol has come a long way, transforming negative intention into self-reflection and art-making. His new collection “C.R.O.L.O.S.” is the culmination of four years of painting, drawing and experimentation. The show, which opens Saturday, April 7, at Santos Fine Art Gallery in Encinitis with workshops and lectures scheduled throughout the month of April, traces the path from introspection to creation.

Like much of his work, Crol’s current project explores the ego. For the graffiti artist, the ego inspires not only form but content. Perfecting a stylized inscription of your name is a rite of passage. In art school, Crol began to explore the process of making letters that are characters.

Pictographic lettering is an artistic tradition going back centuries and common in graffiti art, and one that inspired Crol to think about his own style and form.

Crol spent years doing sketches, researching lettering and art traditions, and writing stories imagining the personalities and physical characteristics of his letter-characters.

After producing a series of drawings that looked like Mayan glyphs with decorative armor, Crol turned inward with introspective questions:

“What’s the point of all this? he recalls asking himself. “What’s the point of writing your name over and over again all over the streets?” His research soon turned into contemplation about himself and his inner drives and motivations.

“And then,” Crol recalls, “it became, ok, who’s the guy Crol? And why do I have that name? All these questions.”

El Paso-Albuquerque-Dallas- Albuquerque

Crol grew up in El Paso, Texas in the 1980s-90s, and started painting in middle school with his best friend Werc. Together they sharpened their skills and developed their styles:

“Graffiti is very competitive. So that’s one thing I grew up with—you’re here to smoke each other out. Like I’m gonna beat you no matter what, in style, in size and everything,” Crol recalls.

“Werc and I had a very competitive friendship growing up—I would take one side of the street, and Werc would take the other, and at the end of the day, we would decide who was the winner.”

When he learned he was going to be a father, his plans to go to art school were put on hold, and Crol took up the call to be the provider. “That’s what everyone was telling me,” Crol recalls. “You need to provide, and let go of this idea that you are an artist.”

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