Los Angeles Police Officer Daniel Calderon, 48, is shown with acrylic portraits of fellow Newton Division officers he has on display at the Take My Picture Gallery on South Broadway. (Gary Friedman, Los Angeles Times / October 13, 2010)
Police are armed with handguns, batons and Tasers when they go on night patrol in South Los Angeles and in downtown's fashion district.
Officer Daniel Calderon also has a sketch pad - and, for backup, brushes, black-and-white acrylic paints and blank canvases.
The 25-year LAPD veteran is an artist who for nearly two decades has created expressionistic paintings of the lawbreakers, neighborhood characters and street scenes he encounters during the 7 p.m.-to-7 a.m. shift he works out of the Newton Division station.
Now Calderon is focusing on his most challenging subjects ever: his fellow officers.
A selection of portraits of Newton Division police at work in the 9-square-mile area bounded by the Harbor Freeway, the Los Angeles River, 7th Street and Florence Avenue is on display at a Los Angeles gallery.
For Calderon, 48, his artwork is a logical extension of his police work.
He was a baby-faced rookie assigned as an "undercover narc" at a high school when he found himself in a campus art class as part of his cover. The unsuspecting teacher recognized his sketching skills and encouraged Calderon to pursue his talent - even offering to help him produce a portfolio he could use to get into art school.
"I've always wished I could thank that teacher," said Calderon, who doesn't remember the instructor's name. He declined to identify the high school where he was working to bust drug dealers.
Calderon stepped up his painting after the 1992 Los Angeles riots. He was among the officers removed from the flashpoint of the rioting - the intersection of Florence and Normandie avenues - after the acquittal of four police officers charged with the videotaped beating of Rodney King.
During the three days of violence that took at least 53 lives, injured 2,300 people and damaged more than 1,100 buildings, Calderon made a series of sketches of what he witnessed.
Co-workers urged him to turn the small drawings into larger paintings. That led to a 1992 show called "Florence/Normandie - Seeds of Disaster" and a 1993 exhibition titled "L.A. Riot - Story of the Cobra Team."
Three other exhibitions have featured his work, including a series of charcoal drawings on paper that Calderon titled "People in Custody." Those portraits were done as he sat in the police station with newly arrested suspects who were waiting to be booked.
Calderon said he has never viewed his artwork as anything more than representations of his own experiences while on the street.
Paintings in his current exhibition, "Newton Division," reflect his fellow patrol officers' sense of humor and camaraderie. Each portrait is accompanied by a tiny Mexican loteria card - a bingo game piece that has a whimsical drawing that illustrates different personalities and objects. Newton cops use the cards to decorate their police station lockers.
The dozen police officers shown in the paintings did not see their portraits until Saturday night, when the artwork went on display at the Take My Picture Gallery at 860 S. Broadway.
"I like it. I think he got me pretty good. He caught all our personalities," said Officer Rich Compton, who is depicted emerging from a patrol car.
Enrique Chavez, now retired, is shown among street people in the downtown area. "I was surprised and honored that he included me," said Chavez, who retired four years ago after being disabled in an accident. "You'd always see Danny in roll call with a little notebook, sketching."
Calderon said he pictured Chavez as he remembered him on the job: "He was a sturdy guy - he was like Jack Webb incarnate: He worked a lot of cases."
Officer Butch Swan's loteria card is "El Arbol" - the tree - and he is also depicted as big and strong in his portrait. "He painted me a little larger than life," Swan said with a laugh.
"What's interesting is he paints what police officers see and other people don't," Swan said. "You always see people's hands - what a police officer would see driving down the street."
Officers Frank Contreras, Tom Sherwood and Eddie Rocha are shown with other cops taking a break at a South L.A. doughnut shop. Officer Charles Dickinson stands authoritatively on a dirty sidewalk in front of a small shop protected by iron fencing and a roll-up security door.
"He sees stuff clearly," Dickinson said of the background detail in Calderon's painting.
Officer Frank Diaz has drawn his gun and is holding his baton at the ready beneath a power line decorated with old sneakers hanging by their laces. He is bundled up in his uniform jacket, his hair slicked back in his winter's night portrait.
Officer Cynthia Bello strikes a no-nonsense pose with her gun drawn. "She's a fiery girl. She can hold her own when she is on patrol," Calderon explained.
Lyndon Barber, a rookie officer, is shown holding his baton in one hand and the scales of justice in the other. Officer Gabe Lopez is seen emerging from the new, modernistic Newton Street station.
Other paintings in the 18-piece show depict the small storefront churches sprinkled through South Los Angeles.
All but two of the paintings were sold Saturday at prices ranging from $200 to $550. Proceeds will be donated to an organization devoted to finding a cure for Batten disease, Calderon said.
"It's a kid-killer," he said. Calderon's own daughter, 9 1/2-year-old Lulu, died from the rare neurodegenerative disease 2 1/2 years ago.
Calderon's wife, Kat, said her husband does his painting in a small studio at their Silver Lake home. "It helps him decompress after work. You know there's a story behind each painting," she said.
Gallery owner Gary Leonard said the exhibit will be up through the end of the year. With the exception of Barber, the officers depicted are all experienced veterans of Los Angeles police work, he said.
"There are very few guys like myself with 25 years in the department who are still out on patrol," Calderon agreed.
"These guys are the real deal."
