Meet Austin urban artist, J Muzacz (pronounced like “Musack”). His story should be told, not just for his own benefit, but for the benefit of dozens of artists around Austin who have learned from him, worked with him, and been inspired by him. J started his art career on the street but has carried his talent to massive public art projects, to the classroom, and into the digital realm. Just like the lines which pierce through his mosaic-like works of art, J sees connections all around him, and with us. He seeks to empower his fellow artists, Austin’s cultural community and heritage, and thus, himself, by his work and legacy. Deservedly, J’s story goes (HERE).

Share a little bit about yourself.

Have been working as a full-time artist for the past few years, and part-time as an art teacher. I’ve done art 7 days a week for as long as I can remember… Painting murals and doing commission work for 20 years now.

Started doing street art and murals when I came here to Austin, but before that, I was climbing buildings back in Houston doing graffiti. Then I started selling space paintings down on Sixth street every weekend with Carey Huckaby when I was 19, a sophomore at UT studying Sociology.

[After that, I had to figure] out the business of art, which is something they don’t teach in school, learning how to monetize it, and the different ways you can make a decent living as an artist. It's not always just trying to sell paintings off the wall. It might be teaching, workshops [shows shirt from his Mosaic workshop] - which is its own little business… or diversifying!

Tell us a bit about Mosaic Workshop.

It’s an evolution of my teaching practice that fell into mosaics. Teaching art at a private school in 2017 and bringing in a pixel artist. I had been painting in a style that looked like stained glass but had never touched glass in that way before, but I started to get some ideas. A year later, I proposed to Georgetown Municipal art project a concept that I had never done before: a 300 sq. ft. pixel art project, made of glass tile. 

They went for it. 

I wanted to get my foot in the door for this new kind of art because I had realized that public art does not like paint, for obvious reasons… a painting outdoors is not going to last more than 20 years, and it will need restoration, whereas mosaic is a more permanent way to make murals for public spaces. Crash course in figuring out this process. I accumulated lots of supplies after this project, so I was able to open a small studio with a grant from the city where we could give free workshops, using the stuff leftover. A lot of people took me up on it. I trained them, and in fact, Veronica Ceci, who is helping with this giant mural on Lake Austin today, came to that workshop and now she is doing this as a professional. She’s an artist, a printmaker, and she decided she wanted to learn this new form of art. The fact that the workshop was free made it accessible to a lot of people who might not have come if there had been a charge for it. Many people, in addition to Veronica, came to that workshop, and I am still working with them today. It’s continued to grow organically ever since.          

A lot of people have seen you paint art, for instance, on the outside wall of the Dougherty Arts Center. You are also well known for your paintings of low riders. Your art looks stylistically, somewhat similar to your mosaic art. Is it just the same thing on a different medium, or is it more than that?

Somewhat, but the counterintuitive thing about mosaics is they are far more inclusive. It’s easier for a variety of people to hop in and help on a mosaic project. With painting, there is a certain technical skill to it, but with a mosaic, you hit the glass with a hammer, make some pieces, and put it together like a puzzle. Anybody can do a puzzle. This is a puzzle you make as you go. Defined more as a craft. Kids were told in school that maybe they could not draw, so [they] might have been fearful of picking up a brush thereafter. But often, those same people are not afraid to pick up a pair of glass cutters, or a hammer, break some tile and piece it back together. So maybe there are fewer barriers to entry in that way, perhaps even psychological. 

(Note: Here, J is understating and underselling his craft, but I get his point.)

That is yet another reason I am pushing the mosaic angle—I like to bring people into the fold.

[I like] creative job creation because the job is so much bigger [than just painting] and I can afford to pay people, whereas, on painting projects, it was just me and perhaps one other person. I feel like I form a little creative ecosystem around every new project, which allows other artists to have an odd job, a gig, to supplement their own creative projects, and in this way, I am contributing to our artistic community.

J, the collaborator! You have always been into, and talk a lot about equity. Where did that all come from for you and your work?

Maybe it's an innate ethic or belief that comes out that way. Thanks, mom! I have always tried to squash the ego and live simply and selflessly. I enjoy and feel fortunate to be able to create good quality experiences which are also shared experiences.

Sounds like you find mosaic work to be more democratic and wide-reaching, in addition to being more durable.

Yes, I agree, and it has the most impact not only on the client but on the community.

A lot of people think the most durable form of art is now digital. What do you think of NFTs?

I have a buddy who is really good at digital editing, and we worked out a deal where he was able to produce the promotion for my new book. He is even helping me with an NFT project, in that he is recreating one of my mosaics in a way that isn’t just about capitalizing on the art but trying to take it to the next level, artistically, which evolves and innovates from where we are at now. I have never been one to take the easy way. I am always looking for ways to make art, which is more interesting, and perhaps done in ways that have never been done before or in a way that has never been seen before. So, for our collaboration, we ask ourselves how we can take what he knows in the digital world and combine them with our own artistic aesthetic to make something new and attractive.

I would not be surprised if you do this mash-up because after all, mosaics are just big ole pixels after all.

Yes, I agree.

You said you started off graffiti style. Do you consider yourself a street artist, and what’s the difference between street art, and graffiti?

If you come up with graffiti—you are never not part of it. It's like a secret handshake. It's like a club and you are in it for LIFE. I can go buy spray paint in Korea or Japan, where I have lived, and go out to a wall someplace, and see some guys doing the same. We don’t speak the same language, but we know, we are immediately brothers… family. And there is a worldwide graffiti family. While I am not actively a graffiti “writer” as they are called and don’t do letter styles anymore, it's still part of my DNA.

The definition of graffiti is that it's more letter-based, and I do more graphic style now. Graffiti can be considered illegal in some places, perhaps even vandalism. And I don’t do illegal activities, except maybe a sticker here and there. [Laughs]. My headspace is a different realm. Besides, if I am [up] all night painting on a train, then how am I going to wake up the next morning and be ready to do the public art commission I have been hired to do. [Laughs]. When you start making a living as an artist, you start to prioritize in maybe a different way.

Definition of street art… and while it can sometimes be illegal, is being used much more broadly these days. Somebody who does murals might call themselves a street artist as well because their art is on the street, but others might exclude their work as street art because it’s a commissioned piece. It gets convoluted. Some people actually call Banksy illegal graffiti, others call it street art—Banksy probably doesn’t give a shit [laughs].

When I was at your studio, I noticed that some of your colleagues were doing beautiful murals on the practice walls on the back patio, and then people were tagging (graffiti spray painting) over their own art. What is the aesthetic, or spiritual guidance about that?

Having lived in Japan and studied Buddhism, the non-attachment nature of things, the very ephemeral aspect of things, which reduces human suffering, is probably where that comes from. 

Graffiti is made to move. For instance, a lot of the purists who paint trains will never see that train again, but they want it to travel around, you know. But then you have others who are into the ego gratification of tagging their own name everyplace, and there’s a lot of that going around as well. They say, “I am going to be big and famous, and I don’t have the means to do it any other way.” A third driver might be those who want to confront the system which has been imposed on them, so they tag a McDonald's sign, as a way of taking the power back. There are a lot of different ways people can get into it, but the temporary nature of the art is kind of built-in. In each case, the act of making and the act of doing seems to be more important than creating any sort of product.

What is “The Book”?

Yes, we had a successful crowdfunding campaign that ended in January, and we are about to release the book, ATX Urban Art. It’s about graffiti, murals, street art, and mosaics—those are the four main chapters. Divided that way because, as you asked before, “what’s the difference?” 

Well, not a lot of people actually know. 

Since I am from the culture and have had my toe in all those worlds since junior high, it was the right time, and I was the right person to tell this story. For instance, there are a few very good, but very anonymous graffiti artists, whose stories and art have never been properly presented, but because I come from that world, I have access to them and can help them tell their stories. 

The “murals and mosaics” part of the story is an easy one because you could drive around and take your own pictures. But I have been able to get people who have been anonymously doing their own street art and graffiti for 35 years, to dig photos out of their own personal shoe box and give their point of view in a never-before-seen kind of way. A lot of folks don’t know how much of this history we have here in Austin. There are 70-year-old murals still up around town, for instance, at the University Baptist Church. I had to go down a lot of rabbit holes to tell the story of Austin Urban art, past and present, as well as future. 

For instance, I researched black and white photos of murals painted for the Armadillo World Headquarters in the late 70s, which is important because those types of things were what planted the seeds for the current mural craze here in Austin. People say, “oh the Austin mural scene is so new, and just started with the Hope Graffiti Park in the last 10 years.” I say, “nope, Austin has been a badass creative city for urban art for more than 50 years.” 

Because we had such a creative music scene in Austin, it drove a lot of the thriving urban art instincts of Austin, and perhaps still does. I also thought Austin is so well known for its music as the “Live Music Capital of the World.” But I wondered how it is that we also have world-class visual artists here and why they are not more household names? So, I felt the need to give exposure to all this wonderful stuff that has been thriving in the shadows here in Austin.

I have seen early versions of the book and it's so beautifully done. Why did you choose to go this route?

It’s a matter of saying “yes”, and seeing this moment of opportunity both for myself, and others. The book was able to happen because of two interns I got from the ACC studio design program. Justin and Zoe are the superstar designers behind the book—19 and 21 years old! I had seen their work, and since Covid was raging much of this was able to be done remotely.  

Both appreciated how urban art had been integrated into our city, understood the story I was trying to tell, and definitely had the technical skills to make it happen. We all started out thinking it would be a fun project but had no idea it would end up being close to 700 pages, featuring over 120 artists. Because of my own background, as mentioned before, I tried to bring the book structure, interest, and intrigue so that those artists’ stories could be told in the best possible way. We thought about breaking the book up into four different volumes because we have enough material, and from a commercial point of view, that might have been a good idea. But we decided against it and wanted to produce one volume of material people would never forget. I am proud to say, I think we have succeeded.

Wow! I had no idea. I know it’s a big book, coffee table-worthy.

Thank you for helping us tell this story. I feel that this is a legitimizer and authenticator, especially for people who have been in the scene but have not had the opportunity to show their work to what I would call “mainstream Austinites,” who can now pick up the book, learn more about the culture, how and why this work gets done, and how important it is to support your local artists. 

Maybe some of our readers will drive by their favorite mural and be able to say, “that’s my favorite urban artist” when before, they had no idea of how the work got there in the first place. Maybe even a reader might send a short text to their favorite urban artist and say something like, “Hey, thanks for making my commute more enjoyable every day I get to see your art on the wall I pass.” It’s kind of apropos to your blog title “String Theory” in that this project seeks to help make all of these connections happen, where in the past, maybe they had not.

That is so great to hear. J, thank you so much for your time today, and for the work you do for our city in collaboration with so many vibrant artists, you yourself, being one of our finest. Because you are such a collaborator, you have asked that I post links to various artists you are working with right now, and we invite our readers to reach out, take a look, and communicate with any and all of them.

This series, Your Story Goes (Here), is about disseminating stories of people who do not often have the chance to hear their stories told and providing an avenue for folks who have not had the chance to hear those stories, to hear them. Hopefully, we hear each other.

If you want, you can follow the team who helped install the mosaic mural at Lake Austin Spa Resort.

• Alison Skinner - https://alisonskinher.com/

• Emily Ding - https://www.emilyding.art/

• Hope Hummingbird - https://www.instagram.com/hope_hummingbird/

• Veronica Ceci - https://www.instagram.com/lithographette/

• Carmen Rangel - https://www.instagram.com/vivalapainter/

• Mural Supply Co. - https://www.instagram.com/muralsupplyco/

You can also follow The Mosaic Workshop on Instagram and Facebook.

And you can follow J Muzacz on Instagram at @jmuzacz or visit his website at jmuzacz.com. You can also purchase a copy of the ATX Urban Art book here and support the local arts.