The red glow of cars’ taillights, the intoxicating whiffs of exhaust and any driver’s restlessness are familiar to anyone who inhabits Los Angeles. But in 2020, the roads were left desolate. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, everything was put on hold — only essential businesses remained open. People were working remotely and confined to their homes out of fear of the unknown. But somewhere within the depths of Los Angeles, street artist Phobik found a sense of peace and inspiration in those streets.
“I would still go out and paint. I was having trouble with my mental health. I was depressed. Everyone was depressed,” said Phobik. But as an artist, with a graffiti background and access to an overwhelming amount of empty streets, he couldn’t resist. “It actually felt really nice to go out. It was all quiet and I didn’t have to be on the lookout so much.”
With not a car or person in sight, he painted a cat — an image now considered to be his signature. From neon ghost cats to cats eating chips outside of convenience stores, his cartoon depiction of these animals has led him down a meaningful path.
“I have a cat of my own, but I’m a dog person. Long story short, my dog found my cat. And when she passed away, I ended up with the cat. In retrospect, during the pandemic, I was painting these cats because we were a bunch of stray cats, on the hunt to pick up our essentials and food, and then go back home,” said Phobik.
Born and raised in Hollywood, Phobik was drawn to the elusive world of LA’s graffiti and street art culture at an early age. With a passion for illustration, he became known as the character guy.
In street art, there are varying styles and levels of intricacy. At first, artists try to tag as many places as possible, often with a paint marker. Then you get the classic “Wild Style” lettering and it becomes more elaborate from there. Even though he could do that style of lettering, Phobik fell in love with the drawing aspect of graffiti.
“I’ve gotten let go from jobs because I just couldn’t stop drawing. I would draw my coworkers as little caricatures just because I was bored. I couldn’t stop, and that became the launch point to accept that,” said Phobik.
He took the leap from being a graffiti artist who would only get up during his free time to working as a full-time artist. He began selling his paintings, prints and getting commissioned for murals. Although recently, living off his art has been more challenging than ever.
“People need to save up. They need to choose how to spend their money. There was definitely a golden point where it was very successful, and now it’s kind of quiet. But, I feel like every artist needs to figure out how to fix a problem,” said Phobik.
Despite his current search for this solution, his cartoon and comic book-inspired style infused with his background in graffiti has made appearances in galleries all over the world. But as an artist who comes from the streets, entering the gallery space can be considered problematic. Oftentimes, old-school graffiti artists have a problem with the politics of a street artist in a gallery and feel as if they are betraying the streets.
“I respect everybody’s opinion. But people gotta eat. It shouldn’t matter what people think. They gotta find a way, and if they found a passion, and wanna make a living out of it. Why would that be a wrong thing?” said Phobik. “But now we have social media that lets artists surpass the need for a gallery. You can be an entrepreneur and do it all yourself. It’s a lot harder, but you also get to learn a lot.”
As a street artist who has utilized Los Angeles as a canvas for over a decade, he sees a shift from the culture he learned from as a teenager to the culture he participates in today. Los Angeles has become one of the main capitals in the world for public art. On every corner store, there’s a mural most likely painted by a local street artist and on almost every freeway overpass there’s big lettering that spells out someone’s tag. If a bridge appears to be blank, look closer, there are most likely different shades of gray paint that have been used to cover up and discourage this kind of expression.
According to Phobik, there are two kinds of artists based in LA: people who make political art and personal agenda art. He feels as if the relationship between society and this sort of illegal art has changed.
“There used to be more art for art’s sake with no agenda behind it. It left its concepts and interpretation to the public, but now it’s very in your face. It just seems like art everywhere has become weirdly enough a business. It’s not, me talking shit about it or anything, but it seems like people became more comfortable in marketing themselves, where before it was just about expression.” said Phobik.
This lack of interpretation and emphasis on marketing directly impacts the street art put up around the city. He explains that to artists who value marketing over expression, it’s easy for them to think “Let’s make something of this important issue and put it everywhere, so the public can see it.”
In addition to the marketing domination of the culture, this kind of public art is now more widely accepted than ever. It isn’t the same culture Phobik grew up in.
“I don’t like to fight against it [graffiti culture] because I was raised in it. There’s a bunch of rules beforehand that kind of got overshadowed and don’t apply anymore,” said Phobik.
Spot-jacking comes to his mind as one of those extinct rules. He explains its principles, “If I hit up a spot and some other artists came and did something right next to me, that would be a problem. They’re calling more attention away from my piece. I’m the one that jumped the fence and opened up the spot for myself. Then everybody comes and just mooches off the attention.”
Nowadays, you see tags and pieces clustered together in specific areas of freeways that seem to be accessible and Phobik attributes this inclusivity to a newly friendly culture in Los Angeles. Everyone can now put up their piece due to its prominence. But it doesn’t matter how friendly or unfriendly the culture may seem, the street is a territory of its own and that can’t be forgotten.
“There are no rules in the street. I’m very aware of that. That’s how I grew up, knowing about art outside of galleries and the traditional art world. It’s important to remember people put their lives and their freedom on the line for years because graffiti was super illegal. And the more we did it, the more artists rose up, the more it became comfortable for other artists to feel the freedom to do so,” explains Phobik.
Los Angeles’s graffiti and street art culture has survived and grown in this way because of its pioneers who risked everything for their practice and creative expression. This city wasn’t always a place where local businesses utilized artists to help their store make sales, but it was and still is a place where the illegal writing on walls could do more than throw someone’s life off track. Whether an artist has grown up with the culture and seen it change like Phobik or recently tapped into this kind of medium, it’s vital for each participant and their fans to remember its roots.
“I kinda don’t care about a lot of the politics there is. I became an artist to specifically not follow rules; I wanna do what I wanted. I want to do what’s best for me and try to better myself in any way I can,” said Phobik. “That’s what I do and if people are doing that, there’s no reason for me to think, anything bad about, ‘Oh, you’re in a gallery or, oh, you only do street art or graffiti.’ There’s a place for everybody. I just enjoy seeing it out there whether it’s legal or illegal, bad or good.”