Today we’d like to introduce you to J Muzacz.
Hi J, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
The last 16 years have prepared me for big challenges as a muralist and public artist with a passion for site-specific community-oriented work. From making intergalactic posters on the streets of Austin to New York to spraying a four-story Octopus mural in Okinawa, Japan, I have had an exotic multitude of experiences creating public art projects large and small until recent years was created almost exclusively using the medium of aerosol spray paint. Utilizing an abundance of accumulated techniques to achieve results on countless challenging textures and walls in every environment, I have built up a tolerance for the impossible and consistently persevere, meeting deadlines and working within the given budget for a job to maximum effect. I am also adept at collaborating with local artists, contractors, designers, event planners, stakeholders, and have proven so in more than six countries working with clients of all kinds, language barriers aside. I recently completed a 1200-square-foot mural in Flint, Michigan, as part of the 2020 Flint Public Art Project, painted on corrugated metal and brick using nothing but Kobra spray paint (sponsored) and a 30-ft scissor lift in just three days.
Creating a curriculum for an after school painting class specific to graffiti and street art, I forged a new role unique to my passions, becoming the very first Urban Art Instructor for the Totally Cool Totally Art city-wide program in Austin way back in 2006. Teaching lettering, from tags and hand styles to throw-ups, block letters with funk, to wild style and finally production murals, we also covered related fashion and techniques such as stencils, slaps and wheat pasting, and the gray areas of legality from murals to free walls to straight-up vandalism. At the time, I really could not believe I was getting paid to teach graffiti as an art form, and by the city no less! Through this program, my passion for spray painting and street art grew alongside my knack for teaching, a career which little did I know would propel me to faraway lands for the better part of the next ten years. Painting tunnels with South Korea’s finest and festivals in Japan, I grew my graffiti family through art and travel, teaching English and picking up new paint tricks and techniques along the way, always pushing my personal style and adapting to the new and exciting foreign environments working as a teacher and artist. Aerosol styles, whether letters or characters, was our shared common language, and with bits and pieces of each other’s native tongues, we always made awesome productions together.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back, would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
No, of course not. But life is all about perspective. Where one person sees a roadblock, another sees an adventure or opportunity. Financial security, floating projects on credit cards, never had health insurance, and nearly dying a few times because of it. And the obvious fact of mental, physical, and creative endurance and innovation necessary to keep things interesting and produce work for nearly 20 years.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
I specialize in murals, and more recently, mosaic art. I am known for a stained glass/mosaic style of painting produced with acrylic on canvas or aerosol spray paint on walls: lowriders and colorful, celebratory community artwork: digital impressionism glass mosaic murals and studio work. I am most proud of the Grey Ghost mural in East Austin. Featuring blues pianist Roosevelt Williams, we created the 12ft x 16ft piece using a lot of recycled materials such as broken mirror. We cracked ceramic tile, alongside my innovative process of digitizing an image down to the pixel and using that as a reference in crafting the piece out of tens of thousands of square glass tiles. I believe my extensive community experience and as an educator set me apart from many artists at this stage in my career as I truly have dedicated my life’s work to creating large-scale artwork and teaching others, bringing people along for the ride. Not many teachers can say they have produced artworks at the scale I have, and most graffiti artists don’t have a community or education connection. I am uniquely suited for Public Art, exactly where I find myself right now.
Can you talk to us about how you think about risk?
All the time. Every major project is full of risk-taking. Funding projects, not knowing the outcome, I have to trust the vision and the process to get me to the finish line. My first mosaic mural, I laid out for three months at my dining room table, not knowing how it would look up on the wall. There are tons of risks in terms of heights and work hazards, using sharp tools and materials, toxic chemicals, but also the fact that we muralists put our work out in the public-facing criticism or backlash every step of the way. It’s a very vulnerable way of making art.
Contact Info:
- Email: jmuzacz@gmail.com
- Website: https://jmuzacz.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jmuzacz/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jmuzaczartist
Image Credits
Tony Moreno, J Muzacz, Luis Armando Orozco
