California Locos Bring ‘LOCOS Origins’ to Play Pavilion at Historic Millard Sheets Art Center

California Locos will present LOCOS Origins as part of Play Pavilion, a regional group exhibition opening April 30 at the historic Millard Sheets Art Center in Pomona.

The exhibition brings together major works by Chaz Bojórquez, Dave Tourjé, John Van Hamersveld, Norton Wisdom, and Gary Wong, offering a rare collective look at the group’s origins, evolution, and continuing influence on Southern California visual culture.

Play Pavilion features 50 artists and is curated by Keith Ballard, Rebecca Ustrell, and Vince Skelly, with sponsorship from the Claremont Lewis Museum of Art.

Conceived as a “show within a show,” LOCOS Origins will occupy 75 feet of wall space within the larger exhibition. The presentation includes major works from 2001 to the present, marking the first time these pieces have been publicly displayed together in this way.

For 15 years, California Locos has stood as one of Southern California’s most distinctive artistic collectives, merging fine art with the visual and lived languages of Los Angeles and the broader West Coast. Their work draws from graffiti, surf, skate, punk, tattoo, Chicano culture, design, and contemporary art, collapsing the traditional divide between the street and the institution, the vernacular and the canonical.

LOCOS Origins is both historical and immediate. By bringing together foundational works from across the collective’s history, the exhibition reveals how each artist’s distinct voice contributes to a larger cultural conversation about place, identity, rebellion, craftsmanship, and California visual culture.

In addition to the artwork, the exhibition will also include the California Locos hat collection, extending the group’s visual language into fashion and object design. The hats feature leather bills, wool fronts, denim backs, high-resolution embroidery, and solid silver buttons and clasps, underscoring the collective’s ongoing expansion across mediums.

Set within the historic Millard Sheets Art Center, LOCOS Origins places California Locos within a broader regional dialogue around art, community, and creative legacy. For longtime followers, the exhibition offers a chance to encounter major works in one setting. For new viewers, it serves as an introduction to a collective whose impact continues to resonate far beyond the gallery wall.

LOCOS Origins opens April 30 as part of Play Pavilion at the Millard Sheets Art Center in Pomona.