“People will always want to talk about [my past] because it’s exciting. They focus on who you were, not who you are, or who you’re trying to become.” -Steven Free
Steven Free spends a lot of time with animals, whether it be the dogs he walks to pay the bills, the kittens he and his wife live with, or the giraffe that lives in his heart.
A radio plays to the hum of an overhead projector in a suburban backyard studio. A shelf stuffed with toy giraffes looks down on a tidy workspace. There are sketch boxes, a sink surrounded by binders filled with paint swatches, and a table topped with replica shipping containers that exhibit pieces by an (in)famous Bay Area graffiti artist. Hunched over the desk, standing in the spotlight of the projector’s halogen bulb, or tagging paint mixture instructions on index cards is Steven Free, better known as “Girafa,” a painter with a past that keeps his hands hard at work and his head in the clouds.
Steven’s artwork centers on a character that he developed as a teen. He was adopted as a toddler after his birth mother left him in a Bay Area motel room. That experience, subconscious in specificity, set him on a path of self-actualization. Stimulated by the response he got from recreating comic panels as a child, he gravitated toward creativity. Always doodling and looking for ways to express himself, Steven enrolled in capoeira, a martial art and dance form originating among enslaved Brazilians. He practiced capoeira for 18 years but gained an identity that would last a lifetime. As a rule, the Mestre, or instructor, would give his students nicknames. He landed on “Girafa,” the Brazilian Portuguese word for giraffe, for Steven, in reference to his lean and towering frame. “Since I have always been interested in comics, superheroes, and their alternate identity, I ran with the nickname and developed a character,” he says. By the early 2000s, the character most commonly associated with Girafa was painted on over a thousand walls, trucks, and pieces of property that did not belong to Steven. That version of radical self-expression resulted in arrest and restitution but began a new life for the giraffe that was once Steven Free. While not initially inspired by his inherited alter ego, giraffes have grown on him over the years. “When my Mestre gave me the nickname,” he explains, “I thought it was dumb, but I started to realize its potential. The long neck. The pattern. The environments I could include.” The versatility of the giraffe, combined with his appreciation for animals, stemming from his mother’s passion for bringing home pets, fostered themes of interspecies communication. “Animals can’t tell you what they need,” he says, “but if you pay attention, you know. It is a weird dialogue we have with our pets. I don’t draw people; I’m not interested.” Transposing elements of pop culture and human expression on the characters he illustrates has drawn audiences to his work. “I like giving animals human qualities when expressing sorrow, anger, or excitement.”
When asked how he feels when stumbling across pieces of his past life in the wild, Steven shares, “It’s the paint; it’s the sun that has eaten it away. It’s trippy because I know that was me, but I’m not carrying that same feeling.” His time creating graffiti will always trail him, “People will always want to talk about it because it’s exciting,” he claims. “They focus on who you were, not who you are, or who you’re trying to become.”
Today, Steven splits his time between walking dogs and creating art under his Girafa moniker. He shifted his focus from producing art to designing products after his 2019 solo exhibition at the late Arsenal SJ. Having difficulty selling artwork, Steven wanted to make his brand more accessible to those who followed his graffiti. He produced T-shirts, totes, keychains, and air fresheners, his latest push being a collection of replica trucks and shipping containers bearing iconic Girafa pieces. “After wrapping that show, I was burnt out with painting. I jumped into product design, but that took on a life of its own. That’s pretty par for the course,” he claims. “Every artist lives in the process of gradually evolving their work. I am excited to jump back into art and see if I can make a living being a full-time artist.”
Searching for greener pastures can be challenging, especially for a giraffe accustomed to the city streets. Steven’s shift to studio practice has been a change of pace. “Projects can take a long time. I didn’t have weeks to complete work in the street. I had to learn to be okay with not finishing a piece within an hour.” That extra time allows Steven to mix paint colors and meticulously document the shade and mixing process on index cards he catalogs in binders. While working fast is no longer a requirement, he always looks for ways to optimize his processes. “How can I work smarter, not harder? Sometimes, my process is very rigid, and I do things until they burn me out,” Steven says.
Steven’s contemporary work is still inspired by and attributed to the Girafa character he imagined as a teen, but he now distinguishes between foreign and familiar imagery. “I have a bad habit of trying to reinvent the wheel. I try things and start to lose the core of my work. It is a balance. I want to maintain what I am known for.” Pieces displayed in his studio depict a classic Girafa spot pattern composed in multi-color abstractions, a process formed by creating templates, masking lines, and inverting colors; his interests in color theory and intricate detail are on full display. “I can get into these pattern paintings with multiple color overlays until the process takes it out of me, and I need to scale back. I want to continue doing Girafa; it is what I am known for and enjoy doing, but I want to see where that can evolve.”
The next step for Steven is branching outside of the South Bay. He is working on a catalog that he hopes to display in galleries nationwide. This ambitious next step is one of evolution and self-determination. “Having work shown outside the Bay Area would give me much more confidence. There’s fear, because you don’t have hometown support, but you must be comfortable with things not working out, pieces not selling, or not being invited back. That’s the artist’s journey; even when things aren’t working out, you still have this drive. It’s who you are. It would be like telling somebody they can’t breathe anymore. You can’t help yourself.”
In addition to enduring the growing pains that come with forging a new path, Steven is a newlywed and lives a simple life with his wife and cats. When asked why folks should care about Steven Free, he counters, “I don’t think people should care about me. They should care that there are people like me willing to express themselves through art. I am not where I would like to be, but maybe somebody out there looks up to me. If they could see what I went through, the struggle, and how I continued to do work and want to progress as an artist, and that gives them hope? Being an artist is hard. We need people doing that hard work to prove it is possible.”
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A series of locally owned shops line the sidewalk down Santa Clara Street in San Jose: a plant store, a record shop, and eateries. The latest addition to this neighborhood is a boutique art gallery called 1Culture. This gallery started as a traveling pop-up and moved into a storefront across the street from San Jose City Hall. The shop, as it’s referred to by the small team that runs it, is owned by local real estate agent and art supporter, Andrew Espino. He has a story to tell–just not his story.
Right before the pandemic lockdown in March 2020, Espino was driving his seven-year-old son to karate practice when his son posed a question: “Dad, what do you do to help people?” Baffled, and a little offended, Espino asked his son what he meant. “I know you sell real estate, but what do you do to help people? To help the world?” Espino recalls, “That really dug at me. It’s how your kids see you.”
Espino studied business at Saint Mary’s College in Moraga, not entirely sure what he wanted to do with the degree. Sometime in college, he met and started helping a local real estate agent with administrative tasks. His very first real estate investment was a multi-family home located downtown on Reed Street. Espino collaborated with graffiti artist Scape Martinez to create a one-of-a-kind mural that would live on the building. The painting process and unveiling of the piece turned into a community event, coordinated by Espino. He learned that he loved creating a space for both local art and the community. While the building has been sold since then, the mural lives on today. It continues to read, “culture.”
Espino continued to work with local artists, helping them organize pop-up galleries. In the process, he learned the artists’ stories and promoted their art with folks who stopped by. “I wanted to understand the hustle that an artist goes through, from having to set up shop to selling their work. Some days we would leave with everything we came with, but to see an artist go right back out there the next weekend inspired me.” Espino’s time traveling to far off cities in search of art got his mind turning. He wondered, “How can we help change some of these artists’ lives? What tools do I have that can help? Giving them a platform? That’s when it hit me—that’s how we’re going to make change. We’re going to help artists.”
From then on, Espino started his arts-focused business. Once he knew the story or meaning behind a piece, he loved it even more. He wanted others to experience that same feeling. “I realized I wanted to find a way to continue sharing artists’ stories far and wide. The meaning behind a piece makes it much more important.”
After a year of coordinating pop-ups, Espino opened 1Culture as a permanent space to uplift artists and bring community together. The gallery’s name, 1Culture, is rooted in originality, creativity, and unity. “If you believe in those three things, then you are part of one culture. We are a Chicano-owned gallery, but we are open to everybody and want to uplift all artists and communities.”
“We like to ask each artist to tell a story—what is their art about? That’s a huge part of our mission. We encourage them to give us the full body, the details of what they’re trying to say.” – Andrew Espino
The gallery plans to rotate shows every six to eight weeks, curating a mixture of hand-selected artists and announcing calls for art. “Right now, there is a long list of artists we would like to highlight.” Espino runs 1Culture and coordinates art events around town while continuing his career in real estate. His first large event, KixCon, brought together sneaker heads, visual artists, musicians, and dancers at Eastridge Mall.
“We like to ask each artist to tell a story—what is their art about? That’s a huge part of our mission. We encourage them to give us the full body, the details of what they’re trying to say. We believe that behind the artwork is a mission, a purpose. We want to tell those stories.”
Espino has continued to incorporate art into his real estate career. He has procured a large art collection over the last 20 years. Occasionally, he will use his private collection to dress up the houses and apartments that he is selling, giving the space a local and welcoming feel. Today, Espino has an answer to his son’s questions. “When I opened the shop, I thought about what I wanted people to see or how they would feel—and with everything going on in the world, I really wanted people to feel present. When you walk in here, you can take a time out from the world and really get lost in these stories that haven’t been told, and you’ll be in a place where you can feel at home.”
shop1culture.com
136 East Santa Clara Street
San Jose, Ca 95113
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