Will Bowen | Downtown News
In the basement of a very old, red-brick building in the heart of the Gaslamp District, where outside, the down-and-out crawl the streets like hungry mice – artist Caleb Aero has been formulating the fashions of a far distant future in a series of glittering paintings called Galactic Girls.
The story goes that the girls are all beauty queens from different worlds throughout the universe and they are competing to be chosen as Queen Bee at a giant galactic beauty pageant.
The girl chosen will then provide half the genetic material for a new yet-to-be-discovered planet that will be populated by her offspring.
The Galactic Girls are all young, slender and beautiful. They wear exotic and inspiring fashion – a combination of space suit and samurai armor; jewelry – bracelets and necklaces are oversized and intricate; hats and headwear are gaudy but splendid; cloth is colorful, bright, and embolden with abstract patterns; all pour out to create a glamorous “modern primitive” in the Blade Runner style. You could just see them on the fashion runway, and someday you may.
In the background of the paintings are gleaming stars and swirling suns, dots, and drops of color that all denote the girls’ worlds of origin. It’s an abstract collage of colors with a defuse light that adds to their mystery and intrigue.
Artist Caleb Aero, a self-styled “urban underground artist,” works on his girls with a unique style of painting that involves layering – using spray paint, drawing pens and pencils, and regular paint in different sequential orders to create a collage or mixed media creation.
Many of his paintings are made on recycled hip-hop music posters that Aero has designed for concerts – come and gone – and a hint of the lettering is left to peep through the paint.
In addition to his Galactic Girl series and countless music posters, Aero has done over 1000 murals. He has also done commissions for huge corporations, such as Sony and Virgin Airlines, and painted portraits of celebrities, such as Snoop Dogg, Wu Tang Clan, and George Clinton.
Aero has also designed a line of handmade one-of-a-kind sunglasses and warrior masks, and he has created his own line of eco-friendly spray paints.
“For the last eight years since giving up modeling, I have worked on my spray paint line which I call Blubber Colors. There is eight years of my life in one of those cans. I worked with a 92-year-old guy who had been a chemist for Howard Hughes to develop my paints.”
Aero, considered a pop icon, and called variously: “the king of graffiti,” “the Tony Hawk of spray paint,” and a “spray paint superstar,” was born and raised in Koloa on the island of Kauai, the son of a Hawaiian father and a hapa-haole mother, who ended up raising him and his two siblings by herself. His first name Caleb is after the Caleb in the Bible, who along with Joshua, scouted out the Promised Land for Moses.
“People wonder if I grew up rich or poor,” Aero said. “Money and status don’t really matter that much on Kauai because at the end of the day, rich and poor are all down at the beach watching the sun go down in equality.
“Kauai is not a materialist culture because rich and poor all want the same thing – a nice sunny day and good surf.”
Aero’s interest in the arts started early.
“I was very influenced by the art of ancient Hawaiian culture which I could see all around me,” he said. “From an early age, I was an artist entrepreneur, making things out of shells and coconuts to sell to tourists.”
When Aero was in the 7th grade (that’s as far as he got in school), his family moved to Los Angeles. There, Aero was discovered by a professional photographer, which led to a career as a male fashion model.
“As a male model I traveled the world for 14 years from age 14 to 28,” he said. “I lived in Germany for two and a half years, in Italy for two years, and in Japan for one year. In Europe, I was exposed to fine art at the different museums. My favorite painter was Raphael. But in recent years, I have become more of a recluse, perhaps as a reaction to being a public figure for so long.”
An example of Aero’s most recent mural art work can be seen at the corner of 10th Avenue & E Street on the outside wall of Pokey’s Restaurant.
On the night of April 19, 2013, in conjunction with a concert by Slum Village, Aero will give a live demonstration of his painting style at House of Blues in the Gaslamp District Downtown.
For further information visit CalebAero.com or blubbercolors.com. To contact Aero call 619-228-6866 or email [email protected].
Will Bowen writes about arts and culture. You can reach him at [email protected].
