This story and all of L.A. TACO's Arts coverage is sponsored by Nikos Constant.
Artist Joey Terrill, an East L.A. local, has created windows into the lives of Chicanos across several major eras. Terrill has had art pieces displayed in various museums across the country, from Marc Selwyn’s Fine Art studio in Beverly Hills to the Hammer Museum in Westwood to Orutzar in New York City’s Tribeca neighborhood.
He was also a pivotal figure in queer liberation.
Terrill sat down with L.A. TACO in his humble Cypress Park studio to speak about AIDS advocacy, racial disparity in the art world, past lovers, an upcoming retrospective, and his famous but short-lived queer Chicano magazine, “Homeboy Beautiful.”
Terrill created the famous and beloved “Homeboy Beautiful” in 1978, a project coordinated with friends from the art world, including multimedia artist Teddy Sandoval. The first edition centered on a made-up story about an investigative reporter named Santos sneaking into an “underground secret homo homeboy party” to report for the magazine.
The on-the-ground reporter ends up getting drunk and lingering at the party despite feeling disgusted at a group of Chicano men slowdancing and making out with each other. He takes notes of colored bandanas in the boys’ backpockets that signaled different sex positions.
The first edition centered on a made-up story about an investigative reporter named Santos sneaking into an “underground secret homo homeboy party” to report for the magazine.
In this same edition, you can also find an advice column in the magazine titled “Ask Lil Loca,” as well as current fashion trends amongst Chicanos and a makeover being done on a white woman who gets turned into a “chola.”
Terrill played Santos, as well as “Lil Loca.” The entire project was a fictitious magazine, which is why he does not refer to it as a traditional zine, he explains. Terrill says he designed it to point out misogyny and homophobia in Chicano culture. He says he wanted to keep it satirical, fun, and politically incorrect in a “good way.”
Terrill tells L.A. TACO that he made 100 issues and sold them at three locations in Los Angeles: at Chatterton’s Bookshop at 1818 N. Vermont Avenue (now home to Skylight Books), A Different Light bookstore located in Silverlake until its closure, and the Soap Plant / Wacko in Los Feliz.
Terrill made a second edition of "Homeboy Beautiful" titled “East L.A. Terrorism.”
”But there was no East L.A. terrorist. There were no homeboy terrorists invading the west side or white communities, although people would have these racist and xenophobic fears about Latinos in East L.A.,” says Terrill.
In this second magazine, Santos made a return and went on a photojournalistic adventure into Westwood where “homeboy terrorists” break and enter into a white home and kidnap a married couple and their maid.
The couple is taken to be tortured in East L.A., force-fed menudo and chiles, and made to watch Univision on channel 34.
In that second issue, Terrill also creates a fictitious scenario where the "Homeboy Beautiful" editorial offices were taken over and invaded by “homo homeboy protesters” who were protesting the first issue due to their feelings of being exploited. They called for "Homeboy Beautiful" to present their side of the story and share their art and voices.
Terrill says the idea for this story derived from a true editorial takeover that occurred on March 18, 1970. A group of 100 feminist activists took over the editorial offices of Ladies’ Home Journal in an 11-hour sit-in, demanding an end to sexist advertising and calling for better pay and an all-female editorial staff.
While then editor-in-chief John Mack Carter refused to resign, he agreed to the protesters’ demand to create a new progressive section in the magazine that appeared on newsstands in August of that year.
Issue #2 of Terrill’s magazine also featured a one-page comic strip titled “The Adventures of Spooky y Puppet,” two “homo-homeboys” in love who cruise through East Los Angeles on a Saturday night to find a place to spend time together and find something to do. As they drive, one of them leaves the window rolled up since they’re blasting Beethoven and don’t want to be outed.
They soon park, and a woman catches them kissing in an alley. They end up on the Hollywood freeway after a wrong turn, unbeknownst to the couple that there is a gay community in Hollywood. The comic suggests that even Hollywood’s white-centric gay community would not be a comfortable place for the two gay Chicanos.
Unfortunately, issue #3 was never created, but Terrill says he planned it to focus on “Homeboys in the Arts,” an exposè meant to critique the art world.
“I broke up with my boyfriend at the time, so I set it aside and moved to New York,” says Terrill.
Before "Homeboy Beautiful," Terrill was deeply involved in Los Angeles’ queer and art communities. Born in 1955, he grew up in East Los Angeles as a second-generation Chicano who began making art as soon as he could pick up a pen. Surrounded and inspired by his father’s art in the home, Terrill began creating before kindergarten.
He describes a time in childhood when his father asked which picture books he liked best, and he said he loved “The Three Little Pigs” and “Popeye the Sailor Man.”
After that, he came home one day to find two murals of these characters painted across the walls in his bedroom.
“I thought, ‘Oh my God,’ my dad is the best artist in the world,” he tells L.A. TACO. “I also realized that by then, that led me into a love for popular art, and illustrations and animation, and cartoons. It extended into watching Disney cartoons and devouring magazines and story books,” says Terrill.
This fascination for art led him to consume the works of Andy Warhol and “all things pop culture” at a very early age.
Terrill’s art focuses heavily on gay and Chicano life. He tells us that he has known about his gay identity since childhood, having felt like heterosexuality was foreign to his biology when he was around six years old.
He describes meeting heteronormative expectations with pure confusion. Terrill details a moment from when he was five to six years old in 1961: he was enamored by Dorothy Provine playing a flapper in the TV show "The Roaring Twenties." He says he described her outfit and beauty to his mother, who responded playfully, “Oh mijo, is that your girlfriend?”
“Oh, they somehow expect or think I’m somehow going to have a girlfriend. That was like a foreign concept to me,” he says.
Terrill says he’s always had a strong sense of this identity.
When he was 12 years old, he enjoyed going to Catholic church. He was in choir and calls himself the perfect Catholic boy.
“I sang in choir, I had the voice of an angel, the Mass was in Latin. By the time I was 12, I used to go to church by myself; no one had to tell me to go. But one Sunday, the priest . . . it was the first time I heard them talk about the evils of homosexuality, and I remember sitting there and thinking, ‘Oh my God, you’re wrong. He’s talking about me; he doesn’t know what he’s talking about,’” Terrill says. He tells L.A. TACO this was an early moment that slowly drove him towards Atheism.
When Terrill was 17, he says the Gay Community Services Center was in an old Victorian house on Wilshire Boulevard and Union Avenue, led by “queer and lesbian hippies.”
He says they held youth groups that he would attend to speak with other gay teenagers about their ongoing issues and oppression. He recalls that before homosexuality was voted on to be removed from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) by the American Psychiatric Association (APA), sometimes other teenagers would ask amongst themselves if they were mentally ill.
“It wasn’t until, like, ‘74 that homosexuality was removed as a mental illness, so even when we would have discussions with the other teenagers, sometimes the discussions would be like, ‘Are we really mentally ill?’ and I would be like, ‘No! We’re not,'" Terrill says.
Terrill also participated in the fight for farmworkers’ rights, though he says amongst many Chicano activist groups there was a lot of homophobia, and recognized many members who were closeted.
During his time at the gay youth group, the center received requests from local High Schools for LGBTQIA+ people to speak at the school about their experiences, typically under the subject of “sexual deviancy.” He explains that he did this a handful of times.
“It wasn’t until, like, ‘74 that homosexuality was removed as a mental illness, so even when we would have discussions with the other teenagers, sometimes the discussions would be like, ‘Are we really mentally ill?’ and I would be like, ‘No! We’re not,'" Terrill says.
“I’d usually have another speaker with me, usually a lesbian; it would be a boy and a girl, but a couple of times I went by myself. When I would go in, the teachers would say, ‘Oh, I guess our guest is here,’ and all the students would look at me like ‘Oh, that’s what a homosexual looks like.’”
He explains that the teachers would ask the students to take out their permission slips, telling us that these high schoolers needed parent permission to hear from a gay speaker.
He says at the end of these events he would always write down the phone number to the gay community center on the chalkboard, telling the class that statistically one in 10 people are gay or lesbian.
“It was just really an oppressive time,” he tells L.A. TACO.
Terrill says he’s always had older gay mentors who introduced him to the gay world, slowly showing him that the community was larger and included many other Latinos like himself.
“I learned to respect and value the elders . . . now that I’m at this point in 2026, I love it when there’s fans of my work because it's usually in the context of their engagement and understanding of a queer identity,” Terrill says.
Like many other creators, Terrill explains that he’s always been an artist.
He says that, regarding the "Homeboy Beautiful" magazine, he collaborated with Teddy Sandoval in his late adolescence to make art that explored their “Maricón” identity. They did this in numerous ways: through mail-in art pieces he sent as postcards, drawings, photography, and silkscreen prints. This was the genesis of his famous black-and-white portrait where he lay on the floor of an apartment in a white t-shirt that read, “Maricón.”
“Maricón” is a Spanish derogatory term that dates all the way back to the 16th century and was used to insult feminine men, but it has since been reclaimed in various Latino LGBTQIA+ circles.
In 1978, Terrill said he wanted to make a magazine that parodied upper-middle-class magazines such as Architectural Digest, LIFE, and House Beautiful, eventually leading to "Homeboy Beautiful."
Although Terrill shared his art with his friends and community, there was always a separation between communities. In the professional art world, he wasn’t taken seriously, and in Chicano communities, his gay art was rejected.
“The story of Chicano art, particularly in L.A., is that Chicanos were not taken seriously in terms of the art we did,” he tells L.A. TACO.
Terrill commented on their exclusion from white-owned galleries.
“Chicano artists developed a very do-it-yourself, DIY perspective, and would create art and exhibit it in our own spaces, our own galleries, our own studios, while also commenting on that exclusion. One could see that in the avant-garde group ASCO . . . using L.A. as a backdrop for their performances, while also critiquing museums and the art world at the time,” Terrill says.
“In the last 15, 20 years or so . . . the art world started to merge and investigate and promote Chicano art. I never thought my work would be shown in museums. Now in 2026, I’m excited about the fact that my work is located in about 17 museums across the United States,” Terrill tells L.A. TACO.
“The white galleries would say, ‘We’re not doing Chicano art. We don't do gay art,’” he says. “Even the Latino galleries would tell me, ‘We don’t do gay art.’ And I would tell them, ‘Maybe you should? Considering how many Latino artists are gay or queer.’”
Terrill says, “By the mid-80s, I had two galleries I was starting to exhibit at, and I felt like I was finally stepping into the world that I want[ed] to be in. It was the Michael Ivey gallery on La Brea, and the James Turcott Gallery on 6th Street. James Turcott and Michael Ivey were both gay.”
Terrill says that, even then, his art was criticized as “gay boy” art, as some LGBTQIA+ artists wanted to be accepted into the mainstream art world’s infrastructure and would abstain from anything that showcased art about the queer experience.
“The white galleries would say, ‘We’re not doing Chicano art. We don't do gay art,’” he says. “Even the Latino galleries would tell me, ‘We don’t do gay art.’ And I would tell them, ‘Maybe you should? Considering how many Latino artists are gay or queer.’”
After this, AIDS hit. It was like wartime, Terrill explains, and he made the decision to advocate for those falling ill and losing their lives to the virus. He began working with the Stop AIDS Quarantine Committee in 1986 after Proposition 64, led by political extremist Lyndon LaRouche.
Proposition 64 was placed on the ballot and aimed to classify HIV/AIDS as an infectious, contagious, and communicable disease and call for quarantining all people with the virus.
This struck an intense fear in Terrill. He says the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors held a discussion to possibly reopen Manzanar, the Japanese Internment camps, to quarantine those with HIV.
“Once it was defeated, the group, all these gay activists, led by Michael Weinstein, who I knew from the 70’s as a queer activist . . . it incorporated as AIDS Hospice Foundation,” says Terrill.
“People were dying in the streets. People were sent to County General. The nurses would refuse to go into the rooms; they wouldn't change the bed linen, they’d leave trays of food outside the door even though the person was weak and couldn’t get up,” he recalls. “It was disgusting. So, they did AIDS Hospice Foundation, and opened the first hospice specifically for people dying of AIDS. Then shortly thereafter, a couple of years later, they reincorporated as AIDS Healthcare Foundation and focused on providing care and treatment with clinics.”
Terrill worked with AHF for 19 years. In 1996, he tested “undetectable” for HIV for the first time. That is the designation given to a person living with HIV who does not have enough of the virus to transmit it to their sex partners, as long as they remain on their medication and maintain an "undetectable viral load.”
“Up until that point, I still expected that I would be dying from AIDS,” he says. “All my friends were dying. Getting sick and dying. Other people all around the country were dying. There was no lead-up; the death was surrounding us.”
When he was tested undetectable and given an “antiviral cocktail,” he was filled with conflicting emotions. He was glad he would survive, but saddened about the fact that prior medications had not worked for his friends and still led to their deaths. All he knew was that he needed to make art about these emotions. He wanted to make various art pieces from one image source, leading to the genesis of his famous still-life series.
“I was sitting at my breakfast table with my HIV medication there, and my Cheerios, and I thought, ‘Oh, this is kind of funny, this looks like a Tom Wesselmann still-life.’”
Tom Wesselmann was a United States pop artist who created still-lifes in the 1960s, art that celebrated, but also heavily critiqued consumerism in the U.S.
“He would juxtapose images taken from product advertisements, and juxtapose them onto this imaginary tabletop or scenario, with an interior, all made-up, what I loved about them . . . nothing went together. They had this strange quality.”
Terrill took this trope to “Mexicanize and queerize” his own still-lifes.
“I was illustrating the life of someone who is living with HIV, who is taking this medication to stay alive. I was also indicating that these drugs are a product, just like Cheerios or Coca-Cola, or anything else that I put on there, and as such would make money for the pharmaceutical industry.”
Terrill had worked at AFH, and while he recognized that the medication was saving his life, he had strong opinions about the industry.
“We knew that the same drugs that cost $10k a year here were provided in a subsidiary in Africa for $400, and the company still makes a profit,” Terrill tells L.A. TACO.
Terrill’s still-life series includes wallpaper he saved for years. He used to work with an ex-partner hanging wall coverings; he got jobs with wealthy clients and did work from Beverly Hills to San Marino, Santa Barbara, and Palos Verdes. He says after these jobs, he'd have one or two rolls left over. He says he always wanted to use them in an art piece and held onto those rolls for 15 years.
“Here I am making these fake still-lifes that don't exist in reality, but here I am using real HIV medication and real wallpaper to present a domestic setting, and, at the same time, on a personal level, it reminded me of Rick, who was the love of my life,” says Terrill.
“Here I am making these fake still-lifes that don't exist in reality, but here I am using real HIV medication and real wallpaper to present a domestic setting, and, at the same time, on a personal level, it reminded me of Rick, who was the love of my life,” says Terrill.
Terrill tells L.A. TACO that for the first piece of his still-life series, he used one of the medicines from his HIV treatment, Crixivan. He glued four of the pills on the table of the artwork.
Through his work, Joey Terrill has created a unique lens into the queer Chicano world. Giving a voice and immense representation to young gay Chicanos.
Terrill is currently preparing for a retrospective at the Hammer Museum in April of next year.
As of right now in Los Angeles, you can catch his collage “My First Crush” at The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, in Little Tokyo. You can see his series “Chisme and Memorias” at Marc Selwyn Fine Art in Beverly Hills until August 22. On September 22, the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art will open and showcase “Chicos Modernos” featuring Terrill's art in Exposition Park.
