Ba’hala ’na* DJ Javier
By Ryan P. Cruz
Tucked into Santa Barbara’s vibrant Funk Zone, just steps from East Beach and hidden between a group of wineries, graphic artist, designer and painter DJ Javier’s studio is a window into the world he has created with his art.
It all makes sense now, seeing Javier in his natural habitat, listening to a perfectly curated hip-hop playlist buzzing through his studio speakers and surrounded by his work: bold-lined stylized characters reminiscent of early Southern Californian surf, skate and tattoo culture, alongside skulls, roses and waves painted on wood panels, surfboards, Dickies jackets and lunch tray “bodyboards.”
In just a few short years, the 28-year-old artist has managed to create a steady stream of work for himself, painting murals for Amazon’s Santa Barbara headquarters, running the creative direction at SeaVees as well as his own clothing brand Canto Vision – all while finding time to paint a new collection of pieces for an upcoming show at San Diego’s Point Loma Nazarene University.
DJ Javier, Untitled, acrylic on wood panel
Javier’s unique blend of surf rat, street-art motifs with Filipino and Mexican American inspired imagery is immediately recognizable, with his latest high-contrast fluorescent palette and heavyweight black linework creating a signature look that carries through each piece.
I’ve been fortunate enough to watch Javier mature into the artist, husband and father he is now, and here in his studio today, I can see the fingerprints of all his influences speckled throughout the space.
I met Javier when he was in seventh grade. He was an energetic kid, bouncing off the walls and always on top of what was “cool.” Whether it was music, streetwear, skateboarding or anything stylish, he knew about it. We had a similar upbringing, growing up in the “El Encanto Heights” section of Goleta –where the brand he shares with a high school buddy, Canto Vision, gets its name – as first-generation children of immigrants, trying to navigate a mostly white California culture.
Though my family is from Mexico and his from the Philippines, our households were similar in how different they were from “normal” families. Our grandparents lived with us; our aunts, cousins and various friends-of-family gathered in large numbers, gossiping in their native tongues and making industrial-sized batches of foreign foods. For Javier, it was hard for him to reconcile his non-traditional home life with those of his friends.
DJ Javier, Untitled works, acrylic on cardboard
“Growing up I was always, for some reason, embarrassed of my culture,” he said. “I just wanted to blend in.” It’s a similar experience with many first-generation Americans, a shame and urge to hide your culture to assimilate or fit in with your peers. And like many of us, the shame doesn’t turn into pride until much later in life. Javier’s flip-of-the-switch moment came when, while at home with his wife Courtney, an episode of David Chang’s Netflix series Ugly Delicious sparked a shift in perspective on his heritage and self-identity.
“They were sitting there talking about getting made fun of for their lunch,” he said. He remembers pausing the show, and having a moment of revelation with his wife that he was not alone in that experience, and that many others could relate to the things he had felt had made him feel like an outcast. “If I ever meet David Chang, I’m going to give him a hug,” he laughed. “He totally flipped my perspective.”
Artist, writer and chef Eddie Huang is another Asian American that helped Javier find pride in being part of two cultures at once. Through learning about Huang and Chang’s journeys to establishing their identities, it helped Javier grow into his own. “That moment made me feel like: wait, why don’t I talk about this? And why isn’t it in my work or who I am? From that point on, it began to develop more in my work and in my personal identity,” Javier said.
DJ Javier, Chest Deep, acrylic on wood panel
DJ Javier, Untitled, acrylic on wood panel
That personal identity flourished during the pandemic, when an explosion in anti-Asian sentiment and hate crimes forced Javier to speak out more openly about race and inclusivity in the surfing and art worlds. He began to put more thought into causes he could support with his work, and new themes popped up in his art.
His latest paintings reflect these themes with “warrior” characters donning conical “rice hats” and palm rain guards, holding weapons and riding Carabao, a water buffalo that symbolizes strength, power and the working class in Filipino culture. The historical imagery, mixed with his usual motifs of skulls, roses and hounds, is Javier’s newest incarnation of surf culture viewed through a personal lens.
“I’m starting to understand my work more, and starting to understand myself more. I’m learning and growing every time I do something, morphing different themes,” he said.
The use of visuals typically found in low-rider and Chicano culture, such as bandana headbands and handlebar-mustaches, represent the close relationship of Filipino and Mexican Americans both in California and in history; both cultures experienced colonization at the hands of the Spaniards, and both stood side by side when Cesar Chavez and Larry Itlong organized the Delano grape strike in 1965.
“Filipino and Mexican peoples’ cultures collide,” Javier said. The characters that often pop up in his work are part of this world he has created: farmer-warriors and dogs breaking chains; mysterious skull-headed surfers in full body wetsuits; and a whole array of unique creatures biking, skating or ripping through his scenery.
DJ Javier, Untitled artwork
In his most recent show in August, Javier hand-painted 72 lunch trays, or as he calls them, bodyboards. His friends, he said, used to take the trays from fast-food restaurants and body surf with them. He thought they would make the perfect makeshift canvases, and on each, he painted a unique character and sold them at a solo show at Santa Barbara’s Community Arts Workshop.
In his studio, it’s clear that anything is a canvas for Javier. Old surf and swim fins, surfboards and skateboards are all custom painted, and his past work sits next to his newest works-in-progress, displaying his growth within the last few years.
His latest work is a testament to his evolution; precisely drawn characters smashed into the piece, twisted together and layered on top of each other, filling as much space as possible and rendered with fluorescent shades of orange, yellow and blue that contrast with his bold, sure-handed carbon-black linework.
The high-contrast palette he has moved to recently is reflective of his growth as an artist. The soft pastel colors he started with have evolved into bold and bright hues, and the outline and shading techniques create an even stronger presence. The linework and deep black shading work is even more confident in his newest pieces.
In the poster Javier recently designed for the Asian American Neighborhood Festival in Santa Barbara, a dragon and a tiger are intertwined, fighting for power. Their battle for attention and space creates a layered message, and their composition suggests Javier is not only creating something that looks good, but that he is speaking through his work on different levels. In another piece, a foreboding black hound with its hair raised flashes its teeth, standing on two skulls while holding in its bite a broken gold chain, all framed by ten roses. The images he once drew as an homage to surf culture are now symbols in a visual language he is slowly learning to speak.
DJ Javier, Poster design for Asian American Neighborhood Festival, 2021
“My work is helping me say the words I don’t know how to say, but I know how to visualize. I don’t have words for them, but it’s almost like I know them,” Javier said. “I’m not a super eloquent person. I don’t know how to explain it, so I’m just going to paint it.”
Javier’s graphic design background allows him to play with shapes, weight, balance and contrast to create striking, condensed compositions. His commercial work on murals and large-scale formats have made him even more comfortable with freehand outlines and fitting complex compositions into a contained space.
“I’ve been thinking more about my work with more of these opportunities that I’m getting,” he said. “How do I fill this space perfectly with everything? Why do I do things a certain way? Everything is very smashed in, but balanced.”
Part of his growth, he says, is learning to feel comfortable in the fine art world. Just as in the surf world, which he has felt like is traditionally viewed through a “white lens,” Javier is finding a way to be himself and belong in those spaces. “It’s not that you want to prove them wrong, you are just trying to prove yourself right,” he said.
DJ Javier, Dog Bite, acrylic on wood
DJ Javier, Untitled artwork
Growing up, Javier was never the surf type. He describes thinking of surf culture as a “white guy in shorts and flip flops” – and while that may be true, learning how to surf shifted his perspective to see other driving forces in surfing, from its Polynesian roots to Venice Beach’s cholo-culture influenced Zephyr skate team, the “Lords of Dogtown.”
“I learned to surf way later in life and I did not grow up in a household or do things that are even adjacent to surfing,” Javier said. “My roots are not necessarily found in surfing, so this is surfing to me.”
Now that he and his wife have a son, Duke, his maturity and perspective will only become more complex. I look forward to seeing where he can take it from here, getting a chance to see culture through his lens as he continues to grow, and watching what kind of impact he will have on emerging artists of color.
DJ Javier in his Santa Barbara studio. Photo by Collier
Cover image: DJ Javier, Blood of Man, acrylic on wood panel
*Bahala na is a common Filippino expression used to convey an attitude of optimistic acceptance towards an uncertain future, as if to say, “all they want is to go with the flow, not minding what the outcome might be” – DJ Javier
This article was originally published in print in Lum Art Magazine No. 05.
