Nicholas White
Editor’s note: LA Weekly does not condone vandalism or breaking the law.
An unauthorized graffiti writer has lit up freeways, underpasses and city streets around town this year and last with the simple message “God Loves You,” written legibly and undeniably for the tens of thousands of drivers below to acknowledge and understand. Usually tough and precise graffiti control these spots; “God Loves You” is broadly antistyle — not adhering to graffiti art’s polished standards — and caters to a general audience.
The artist is still largely not yet publicly known and has been labeled online as “God Loves You.”
This “God Loves You” graffiti, when it’s not being buffed, has popped up from Hollywood to East LA to Downtown. Rooted in scripture, “God Loves You” has been accepted for the most part by the streets as community-approved graffiti, defying the likelihood of the pieces being attacked as toyish in appearance and for their dove-like signature. LA, we’re learning, can appreciate well-placed religious graffiti, usurping the traditional graffiti order of artist and crew first.
“God ❤️s You” (Photo: Nicholas White)
“Mad props,” LA muralist and BAMC Crew graffiti writer SLOE, well known for his sharp LA culture murals like Kobe Bryant and 2Pac, commented in July on Instagram on a “God Loves You” freeway piece image. “I first started seeing this in South Central. The risk to spread a great much needed message.”
BAMC’s KAGE seconded the sentiment in: “These words are all we have sometimes … it’s dope for you or whoever did this to do this … at the end of the day we all need a little hope.”
Painted with simple black and white, blue, and pink, with the “o” in “Loves” designed as a heart, “God Loves You,” with “Never Give Up” often nearby, is religion meets graffiti — “graff-vangelism” as some have called it.
Crosses are even appearing on DAN ONE’s recognizable “Raised in LA” stencil pieces around town, in spaces on electrical boxes frequently occupied by palm trees.
LA Weekly spoke with four longtime LA graffiti artists who have incorporated Christianity into their work. They have often encountered tragedies, usually involving life and death, and are committed to spreading the word.
Their narratives coincide with the formation and spread of one of LA’s Christian graffiti artist collectives, the ISI Crew, an acronym for Iron Sharpens Iron, which comes from Proverbs 27:17: “As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another.” Prayers are said before and after painting a crew piece. All four members interviewed for this story are from ISI.
ISI is an outgrowth of the global art group Gospel Graffiti (GG), which was founded by graff writer FASM in the 1990s. As with GG, ISI Crew’s roster is international, with a growing contingent of artists in and outside the U.S., including the LA female artist ASTRAL GLITCH.
VOX, once a member of LA’s major graffiti crews, earned citywide respect for a mixture of leadership, artistic prowess and hustle. With an office laced with a global assortment of achievements — photos of favorite productions in Italy, first-place graffiti competition trophies, plans for a spray paint company’s sponsoring of a signature can with his name, money in the bank, and bragging rights for a placement in the Getty Museum — VOX had graffiti in his bones.
His early career was marked by a strong management hand when representing graffiti writers as a crew leader, a lifestyle that would end up being difficult to metabolize over the years. “If you have a bunch of crazy pirates and you’re the captain, you have to be Captain Hook,” VOX says. “You have to be the meanest of the bunch or else they don’t respect you. Your guard is always up. Your guard is up at home. Your guard is up in the street.”
Courtesy of VOX
VOX was bound for a painful journey — a stroke, followed by a heart attack (fueled by high cholesterol and blood pressure), then a cancer scare. The rapid succession of life-shaking events steered his attention to church and gospel study.
“When I talked to the doctor, they told me they don’t know why you’re alive,” VOX says. “Everything here is beyond anything we have ever seen. You had the biggest wake-up call of your life. If you don’t change at least the way you eat, you’re dead in two weeks, maybe a week.”
Soon he was carrying his own food for a fragile post-heart attack diet and a new Bible.
“I said I have to let that all go,” VOX says. “If they think I’m weak, they think I’m weak. If they think I’m soft, I’m soft. I can’t care about what people think anymore. I have to take care of myself. Then afterwards when I accepted God, I said I only have to be concerned with what the Lord thinks about me.”
VOX was looking down from a metaphorical 100-story building of painting only his name for years. When mixed with the dread of life and death, Vox began to reconsider whether he should keep writing only his name as an artist or instead try something else.
“I had become a slave to my name,” says VOX. “That’s all I would paint: my name, my name, my name, my name, my name, my name. I read these words in the Bible, like ‘the Lord is my defender.’ I’d highlight that. ‘The Lord is my shelter.’ ‘The Lord is my rescuer.’ I was coming along on ‘the Lord is my shield.’ I was looking at these things and said, instead of my name, I should be painting these, representing the gospel.”
People have been paying attention. MISTER 1987 – LA graffiti historian, born-again Christian and 22-year member of CBS Crew – says, “I think it’s dope. It’s kind of daring. [VOX] made his own thing. He doesn’t care about what anybody is going to say about him. It made more people comfortable doing stuff like that. It may have opened people’s eyes.”
VOX says, “Other graffiti crews promote themselves. ISI promotes the gospel of Jesus.”
Courtesy of HIPPIE
ISI, which was started in the Bay Area by FASM and CAMER1 in 2008, and GG have an unusual provision as part of crew membership, one that most graffiti crews do not incorporate. All walls must be legal or painted with the permission of the owner. Vandalizing someone else’s property is usually a criminal offense, particularly on federal or state property. For GG and ISI, the respect of property adheres to the gospel and sets the tone for how their work is done.
GG establishes on its website: “We’re a ministry that is called to spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ through legal graffiti art. This will be accomplished by having members, globally, who share the call and desire to use legal graffiti art as a tool to seek and save the lost. We will reflect Christ, on and off the wall, to show his love to the world.”
As with VOX, when writers transition from secular to Christian graffiti art, they switch from writing their name to Biblical concepts, in effect, spreading the word. This is an ancient principle, whether it be handing out literature, promoting gospel verses, or painting graffiti art on a wall.
“We switch it up where instead of doing our name, we glorify the Lord,” ISI member JER33R, who also belongs to LA’s UTI Crew, says. “Which means that instead of writing ‘JER,’ I would write something like ‘King,’ ‘Sin,’ or ‘Love.’ It’s all about what message we try to get across. Just like in the beginning, He was a message, whether it was poverty or violence or whatever.”
Pico Union-raised JER33R, who tagged LA Metro buses as a teen, incorporates gospel elements into his work, such as a gold halo above a spray can or royal purple gems on a turquoise background.
Courtesy of JER33R
JER33R carries a weight that belies his light and kind temperament. He has congestive heart failure, a stark and immediate struggle that has put many other concerns at bay. Congestive heart failure can cost thousands of dollars and is an ongoing expense, not to mention the physical and mental toll.
“I’ve been through a lot not only with the graffiti, but also family health financing,” JER33R says. “I’ve learned that just surrendering my life to Jesus has been something where I find a lot of tranquility. I try not to stress about anything at all because I know that at the end, Jesus is going to make this happen. As long as I have breath in my lungs and move forward, I’m able to spread the word.”
As a leader of ISI, Wes “WES 77” Abarca had to be careful when finding his place as an artist in the ‘90s. Large gangs dominated chunks of neighborhoods, and law enforcement wasn’t entirely welcoming, all adding up to WES 77 struggling to find a comfortable home to paint as he was finding his identity.
A core-shaking murder of a close friend at a graffiti spot in where Wes was supposed to be, followed by another friend’s death and other friends’ jail time, soured Wes on graffiti and the lifestyle. He began focusing his energies elsewhere, regularly attending church and changing his mindset.
“God and graffiti don’t mix, it just doesn’t,” WES 77 recalls telling himself when he stopped painting illegally and began living a Christian life. “It was an evil thing that was bad, wicked. It messed me up, and it messed up a lot of my friends.”
Courtesy of WES 77
It led to Wes stopping painting for two to three years. Then one day, a random sketch session using Biblical words inspired him to return to art with a new mindframe. Soon WES 77 found himself emerging as a Christian artist at ISI, where he has operated as a leader since the late 2000s. He’s now an Arizona-based professional muralist who paints around the country.
“The ministry Christian-side crews are totally different in a lot of ways,” WES 77 says about secular crews. “There’s not this pressure of you have to be painting and getting up. There is not this drama with other crews because they’re trying to love on people.”
A spiritually harrowing trial of good will belonged to HIPPIE, a member of the BAC Crew since 2003 and ISI. HIPPIE began increasing the mix of Christ in his work with graffiti art style over the years.
HIPPIE painting (Photo: Brandon Taylor)
HIPPIE’s 8-year-old son Noah went on a rollercoaster ride in 2018, from needing open-heart surgery to replace a faulty heart valve, to mounting a full recovery, to playing competitive sports in high school today.
Along the way, Noah’s elderly surgeon became gravely ill, which led to three last-minute rescheduled surgery appointments. The surgeon’s understudy stepped in to do the surgery. Fortuitously, the understudy found and removed a surprise blood clot with fatal potential that was hidden from the original imaging. Not long after Noah’s surgery, his original surgeon died, recasting the sequence of events with extra significance.
A tragic miracle occurred when a teenager killed in a car accident provided Noah’s donated heart. Finding a healthy donor for someone that young of an age or body size was not easy.
HIPPIE and Noah’s extra rare circumstances helped crystallize a feeling of divine protection.
“It was a blessing all the way through, as scary as it was,” HIPPIE said.
The liquid and malleable nature of graffiti art can be reflective of personal style and identity, creating a metaphor for faith and how it is communicated to others. For Christian writers, graffiti art emerges as a calling, a representation of both themselves and the gospel.
Describing his work, HIPPIE says, “You have those moments when [Christianity] is sprinkled in, and then you have the areas where it’s very loud and straight up. … With graff, I was focusing on having a wild letter but still being legible. My interest evolved into letters as a formation. It starts to become alive. I connected it and realized this formation is actually me on the wall.”
Follow ISI Crew on Instagram @isicrew, JER33R @justin_case512, WES 77 @wes7svn, and HIPPIE @hippieoner.
HIPPIE of ISI CREW on the Oct. 16, 2026, cover of LA Weekly (Photo courtesy of HIPPIE; cover design: Mark Stefanos)