Sin Miedo

For the past few days I’ve been drawing for Rodolfo Sanchez, a friend, a barber at Pageboy, an avid musician, and a pillar of our Downtown San Jose community, who we lost to cancer at 28.

The print started as a gift for my good friend Nikk Leonard, who worked next to Rodolfo at Pageboy and showed up for him week after week in the years after his diagnosis, with the kind of care you don’t forget. Somewhere in the middle of drawing it the idea got bigger: a small poster run, 18x24 on cream, two colors, screen printed by Dario at OaxaCali Studios (also a pal of Rodolfo's), framed by my pals at Mountary.com and gifted to his family and the friends closest to him.

I couldn’t have drawn this alone, because the details that matter most aren’t mine. Nikk, Christian Cital (a mentee and his pal), and Angelica and Ruben (who were also close to him) handed me the small things: the shared tattoo, his Boston terrier Stella riding shotgun, and the line “Even when I’m down, I’m up.” My hope is that each one lands as a memory for the people who knew him best.

Two more credits. The composition builds on an illustration by an old Facebook Analog Research Lab team member – the immensely talented illustrator and designer John-Patrick Thomas (johnpatrickthomas.com), whose guitar and floral backdrop fit a musician like Rodolfo so well that I borrowed the bones and drew the rest around him. And the lettering pairs Old English and a custom sans serif font named “Chomsky” crafted by my younger brother Ivan, for the two words that became his motto and his community’s: “Sin Miedo,” without fear.

His brother Edson described him best on the GoFundMe: an old soul in a young body, the kind of guy who’d put on jazz for breakfast, play Los Ángeles Negros while he cut hair all day, and close the night at a Buttertones show. He didn’t ask for help easily, if ever, so when the diagnosis came he turned it outward instead and shared the whole thing on his Instagram, so that other people in their 20s who felt “normal,” the way he did, would go get checked. That’s the guy this print is for.

One kind ask: Rodolfo’s family is still bearing the cost of his fight, and his brother Edson’s GoFundMe is the best place to help: https://www.gofundme.com/f/rodolfo-sanchez. If this print moves you at all, please give it to me before you share it here.

Sin miedo, amigos.