Retreat Director
Mr. Fabian Debora
"God is good…all the time."
Mr.Fabian Debora,
Retreat Director
Fabian Debora was born in El Paso, Texas in 1975, after his parents had crossed the border of Chihuahua, Mexico into the United States, driven by the hope of equal opportunity and a better life for their children.
By the time Fabian was five, and the oldest of three children, his family had moved from Texas to East Los Angeles. The only neighborhood they could afford was infested with drugs and gangs. Nonetheless, he attended the local Catholic school, Dolores Mission, where he discovered a passion for drawing. He found this love of art all-consuming.
Too young to know how to find balance in his life, Debora focused so much on creating drawings, paintings, and images that he neglected his schoolwork and was expelled. The local public school had no art programs. Unable to find a constructive, supportive, or sanctioned outlet for his artistic expression, he looked for ways to rebel. Graffiti art became his world, which brought with it the accompanying vices of vandalism, alcohol, drugs, and violence.
Fabian soon found himself expelled again, and he was enrolled in a series of juvenile detention facilities. Still driven to express himself visually, he turned to the only forms of drawing available to him on the inside: charcoal sketches and tattooing. Tattooing, in turn, drew him closer to incarcerated gang members, and soon they were not just the people who encouraged his art and wore it on their bodies. He came to think of them also as family.
In 1994, Father Greg Boyle, founder of Homeboy Industries, reached out to Debora. Deeply involved in gang intervention and well known for his bottomless heart, Father G saw Fabian’s love of and passion for art and helped him to re-direct his talent. Boyle introduced him to the East Los Angeles Streetscapers of Boyle Heights, who were mentored by the established Chicano-Irish artist Wayne Healey. “Father G,” Fabian attests, “was the first one who taught me to see my art not as a path towards delinquency and incarceration, but rather as a path out of the violence and hopelessness of gang life.”
In 1996, Debora was invited to represent Homeboy Industries, on behalf of Father Greg Boyle, in an art competition held in Rome, Italy. Here Fabian felt that God had bigger plans for his life. He writes, “I just could not grasp exactly what they were, but the gift I knew: my art.”
After falling into the chains of addiction, Debora encountered a spiritual awakening that led him to enter a rehabilitation center. After working the 12 Steps and completing the program, he returned to Homeboy Industries. Today, four years sober, he continues on the journey with art that he finds keeps him spiritually connected. He has also received his certification, from the board of the California Association of Alcohol and Drug Counselors, to serve as the primary counselor at Homeboy Industries.
Fabian "Spade" Debora | SPADE::: The art of Fabian Debora
Retreat Mr. Debora is directing this season: