Leo Limón Brings River CatZ Legacy and East L.A. Memory to The Cheech

For more than four decades, Leo Limón’s smiling cat faces have peered from storm-drain covers along the Los Angeles River, turning stretches of concrete infrastructure into an unlikely public gallery.

Behind their bright colors and playful expressions is the story of an East Los Angeles artist whose work carries family memories, Chicano history, environmental concerns and an enduring responsibility to the community. That artistic legacy has also reached Riverside through The Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art & Culture, where Limón’s work is represented in the permanent collection.

Limón, born in East Los Angeles in 1952, describes himself as a “spiritual informant” sent by the abuelitas to share what he calls PoW WoW: “Play on words, words of wisdom.”

“What I’ve learned is I just want to give back to the community information,” Limón said.

His earliest influences came from family and the sensory landscape of midcentury East L.A. Limón recalls being raised in front of a television while relatives spoke Spanish and prepared handmade flour tortillas with butter. With the wordplay that now defines much of his artistic voice, he says the television made him “loquito” and the tortillas made him “gordito.”

His mother, Maria, was often at work, and Limón found care and inspiration in the home of his Tía Teresa. His Tío Chayo became an early mentor, surrounding him with books, tools, classic cars and musical instruments.

“He had some cats, some guitars, some violins,” Limón recalled. “He had a slide whistle. And I was just like, ‘Wow.’”

Art moved to the center of Limón’s life at Lincoln High School in 1968, as the East Los Angeles walkouts placed questions of educational inequality and Chicano identity before a generation of students. He remembers hearing the language of the movement and asking, “What’s Chicano?”

After moving from metal shop into commercial art, Limón studied with teacher Charles Keck, who encouraged him to carry a sketchbook. He experimented with black ink on Masonite and attended Saturday classes at Otis Art Institute. Libraries became another school — his “Calmecac” — where he studied Mexican art, history and iconography.

“There’s art, and there’s nothing on us,” Limón remembered thinking before discovering Mexican muralists and artists creating work rooted in their own communities. The muralists, he said, returned from Europe determined to “paint our own stuff and do things that are about ourselves.”

After serving as a U.S. Army photographer from 1973 to 1976, Limón worked among artists and organizations central to Los Angeles’ Chicano art movement. His path included Mechicano Art Center, Plaza de la Raza, Centro de Arte Público and Self Help Graphics & Art. He learned from and worked alongside artists connected to Los Four, including Carlos Almaraz and Frank Romero.

Limón joined Self Help Graphics during the 1980s after meeting artist Michael Amescua and interviewing with its founder, Sister Karen Boccalero. What he initially viewed as work that might lead to a conventional sign-painting career instead became part of a lifetime in art.

That career is most visibly embodied by the LA River CatZ. Limón has painted the colorful feline faces on the river’s storm-drain covers while advocating for the waterway as a historic region, cultural space and community resource.

The cats are whimsical, but they are not empty decoration. Limón’s recurring images combine family details with civic and environmental ideas. Some bear marks inspired by his daughter Rosalinda’s birthmarks; others incorporate bicycle-shaped eyes, hearts and Indigenous imagery.

“It’s always a smile,” he said. Limón described the work as a dedication “to women, children, elders and good men, and to the environment.”

His environmental concerns extend to the “Chico Man” series, inspired by Brazilian rubber tapper and environmental organizer Chico Mendes, who was assassinated in 1988. Limón uses the title to challenge small-mindedness, not to describe a small man.

“Chico Mendes, he’s a giant,” Limón said.

Limón’s materials reflect the same resourcefulness. Unable to afford conventional framing for some pieces, he began applying acrylic paint to clear acrylic sheets with squeeze bottles, producing raised lines rooted in drawing rather than traditional brushwork.

“I’m a draftsman forever,” he said. “I really don’t paint. I never took a class in paint.”

Nonetheless, Limón added, “I just invent things.”

The Cheech, operated by Riverside Art Museum, places that experimentation within a broader account of Chicano and American art. Limón was among more than 40 artists included in “Cheech Collects IV,” an exhibition drawn from Cheech Marin’s landmark gift and newer additions to the center’s collection. Riverside Art Museum’s Art-to-Go program also offers lessons inspired by Limón imagery, including “Corazón de California” and “Fish in Coffee Cup.”

Limón’s papers are preserved at UC Santa Barbara, and his work is held by the Smithsonian American Art Museum and National Gallery of Art. Yet his art remains grounded in the public-facing mission that first placed smiling cats beside a river: use the image to teach, question and awaken curiosity.

“There’s so much to my arte,” Limón said. “It’s complicated, but yet I make a simple story. It’s out there.”

To learn more about The Cheech and the Riverside Art Museum, visit: riversideartmuseum.org