Los Angeles was never the plan, she gave it three years max. To the East Coaster, Los Angeles was superficial, plastic and only consisted of Hollywood. She knew she’d hate it, but people always told her she might make it in the city notorious for creatives finding fame. She had to give it another shot. 2008 marked her third and final trek moving out to California as the two previous attempts hadn’t worked out. But this time something was bound to change. New York-raised graffiti artist and muralist Muck Rock now not only calls Los Angeles home but has a mural around every west side corner.
Coming from a rather international background, she was born in the UK but spent most of her childhood in New York and Greece. New York in the 1970s and 80s was the epicenter for hip hop. At this time, the newly formed subculture that birthed dee-jaying, emceeing, b-boying and graffiti was coming close to becoming mainstream.
The subway cars were entirely transformed by the pioneers of the practice like Lee Quiñones, Fab 5 Freddy, Zephyr and many more writers. They would sneak into the train yards at night and completely transform the look of a regular subway car. As soon as the trains left the yard, onlookers from below, people on their morning commute and truly anyone leaving their house that day were bound to see elaborate pieces that not only included an inventive style of lettering but rather depicted a whole scene. Muck Rock would see these cars pass overhead and even ride in them. It was love at first sight.
“I was too young to get involved. But as soon as I could, I started writing on stuff with markers. It wasn’t anything elaborate,” said Muck Rock. “My dad sent me to live, where he’s from, on a little island in Greece, and I actually really started painting there and then went to England and kept painting even more.”
Once she found her footing in graffiti, she returned to New York in the late nineties and began to establish herself as a NYC graf writer. She would paint with the Rock Steady Crew, a famed hip hop breaking crew, in the Bronx and graffiti legend Lady Pink took her under her wing. Lady Pink was the artist that encouraged her to paint more than just her letters, but rather an eye-catching image. She was in the optimal position to learn everything she could and grow as a young artist.
“There wasn’t an opportunity to make money with it back then like there is now. We would do just our names, a background and a character to express ourselves. Graffiti started because people didn’t have the opportunity to express themselves,” explains Muck Rock.
But today, Muck Rock doesn’t get up the way she once did. Now she primarily focuses on murals.
“What happened is that I did get an opportunity. I got a lot of people wanting me to paint and paying me, so I didn’t have to go paint on the transit system anymore,” said Muck Rock.
As more and more of these opportunities came to Muck Rock, the more she focused on cultivating this mural style. Soon, she left the East Coast for the West as a working artist. Upon arrival, she was faced with homelessness due to issues with planning and finances.
“I ended up basically staying in my car. I kind of ran out of gas on Electric Avenue. I had some money coming in, but not enough to get a place,” said Muck Rock.
At this point in her career, she had been painting for most of her life and needed to make a living off her work. She couldn’t devote as much time as she did in New York to doing graffiti. She began working with large canvases and mixing spray paint and oil paint in addition to working on commissioned murals.
“I used to paint a lot outside of Abbott’s Habit Coffee shop, and one day, they gave me an art show. I made enough with the art show to get an apartment. And that’s how I got my start. They just really took care of me. Now I own the house that I used to sleep outside of,” said Muck Rock.
The west side of Los Angeles, with an emphasis on the Venice area, is covered with various Muck Rock murals. A smiling dog on the side of a pet salon greets drivers on Lincoln Boulevard. While Abbott Kinney, itself, is littered with her different satirical animal depictions. From small businesses to corporate chains, Muck Rock has made her way around town with her accurate celebrity depictions to her hyper realistic nature scenes.
When driving on Culver Boulevard, it’s hard not to notice the permanent fixture of RVs that line the side streets and the Ballona Wetlands area. Some RVs display their own works that include images of Homer Simpson and various tags, but the most memorable and common image on these vehicles is one of two rabbits humping, one has a heart on its butt while the other smokes with a thought bubble that reads Muck Rock. This somewhat graphic yet comical scene has become her signature.
“I was painting trash for around a year after my friend, Billy, passed away. He was a garbage picker and punk rock kid who followed me around most of his life. We took care of each other. He was like my child, but my best friend. He ended up passing away from a brain tumor,” tells Muck Rock.
“I just noticed trash more because I’d be like, ‘Oh, Billy would be stoked on that’ and I would paint stuff on the street. One of the things that I painted was this mattress. There were these sixties stripes and cigarette burns on it. It was very cute.”
Her process, when it came to trash art, had to do with what image she felt best embodied the trash. She needed something cute, but a tad dirty — hence the bunnies. She left the mattress on the street with the image of these humping bunnies. Someone took it within the hour, but the bunnies became a new source of inspiration for Muck Rock. When a local liquor store wanted a mural, she and some local kids came together to paint bunnies that were smoking and engaging in other illicit activities. It only lasted a few months until the owner painted over it.
“I was so sad, and my friend told me, ‘Don’t worry about it. Don’t go over there getting mad. Just do more bunnies,’” explains Muck Rock. She took the advice to heart. She painted them on the RVs for free and was putting them in every place she could.
“A postal worker was watching me paint and she said, ‘Oh, they’re producing.’ So we started saying the bunnies keep producing, and so should I. Even if it doesn’t work out, even if It gets destroyed. Even if you aren’t getting anywhere, people aren’t appreciating it. Just keep going. Keep producing,” said Muck Rock.
Luckily for her, murals are a welcomed part of Los Angeles culture. From the 1984 Olympic murals on the 10 freeway to the famed Melrose Wings, public art, both legal and illegal comes together to help Los Angeles and its people represent themselves. Despite being heavily involved in this city-wide culture, Muck Rock doesn’t quite consider herself a street artist.
“The term came about sometime in the early 2000s. In New York, it was about people doing stencils and wheat pasting and it was kind of derogatory. We were referring to people who couldn’t control the spray can. But now street art encompasses more things, including murals, and graffiti. It’s a blurry line though,” said Muck Rock.
This connotation of street art comes from the different kinds of gentrification the practice has been experiencing for a little over a decade. Major brands like Gucci, Patagonia, Tinder and many more now commission walls to be painted in a street art style for the sake of advertisements. Muck Rock feels like this commercialized version of graffiti is formulaic and powered by money, not expression.
“What about these motherfuckers who started it and are homeless or are old and poverty-stricken? They invented this stuff. There’s always that disparity and the feeling that these people aren’t authentic or whatever,” said Muck Rock.
As a New York painter, she sees many differences between the two street art capitals of the country. In New York, it’s vital to understand the history of the artists who paved the way for this practice. Every graf writer in New York has to understand why graffiti is the way it is as well as its progression over the years to get respect from the community.
“In LA, they do their own thing. The graffiti artists have their own thing and their own way of respect. I’ve had people say, ‘Oh, I don’t even know who that is’ when I’m trying to talk about things. They don’t really seem to care that much about where I came from, who started it, the trains, and all that stuff,” shares Muck Rock.
As she got older and became a taxpayer and a homeowner, Muck Rock claims to have grown a bit more conscious when it comes to vandalizing public property. With a focus on beautifying things instead of destroying them, she finds herself reentering the graffiti culture as a volunteer mentor in recovery communities for young creatives with drug problems. Some describe graffiti as an addiction, others a way of expression, but there’s no denying the release it provides — often providing a sober alternative to a night out.
“Sometimes the way that I can reach them is by going painting with them. Then that might be a night where they just paint and they don’t get loaded. We get to experience having, a sober, crazy night together,” said Muck Rock.
From helping in-need communities to traveling around the country painting murals and having her to own open studio in Venice, Muck Rock has seen all sides of street art from its beginnings in New York to living as a full-time artist in Los Angeles.
“I’m just a graffiti writer who kinda grew up and started doing different stuff, but I owe everything to that culture. I didn’t know that I could even paint other stuff until I met Lady Pink,” said Muck Rock. “I always try to credit the graffiti movement with everything that I’ve done. Spray paint started everything for me.”