Photography by Lauren Allen
If family is the most important part of his life, then art comes next for J.M. (James Michael) Rizzi. The New York City native/Dallas transplant has left his mark on the country and the world through his murals, including recently under the Lovers Lane bridge in our University Crossing neighborhood.
Rizzi was obsessed with drawing when he was young. He started by copying comic strips from the newspaper and comic books, and that evolved into learning new techniques and experimenting with different mediums, like oil painting as well as pen and ink. He continued honing his craft as a student at the School of Visual Arts in New York.
While living in New York during the ’90s, Rizzi worked as a graphic designer and took on other random jobs, but he continued to create his own art, including murals. He made his first mural illegally as a teenager living in Staten Island, and he loved the adrenaline rush that came from that experience. One day when he was painting a mural in Brooklyn, the owner of a mechanic shop asked Rizzi to paint a mural at his business, and it lasted for 10 years. Since then, Rizzi has created public art in the U.S. and abroad, including in Saudi Arabia where he was invited to make a mural at a cultural center for art.
What do you like about art?
Part of it is, probably, there’s a bit of escapism. I like art, and I like people who make art if it’s sincere, regardless of what it is because most people don’t. Most people don’t try to do something different or make something that is their own. Art exists for the sake of itself. This is at least my belief, but I like people that do things and make things for no other reason but they want to do this thing.
Photography by Lauren Allen
Not everybody can afford to work as a full-time artist, but you seem like you’ve been pretty successful.
I have had full-time jobs almost my entire adult life, and then I would just at the end of the day go home and make art. It’s OK to not make a living off of your art. That doesn’t mean that you’re not an artist. I think that’s a misconception that a lot of people have. They’re like, ‘Well, I make art, but I don’t make a living off it.’ A lot of the artists that we’ve come to admire never did. If you go home every day and you write, then you’re a writer. Just because you might be sorting mail during the day, that’s not who you are. You’re a writer. But because we live in a society where you have to be able to afford a certain lifestyle, you gotta do a lot of shit you don’t want to do. That’s really what it comes down to. Is it the thing you don’t want to do, is that what defines you, or is it the thing that you want to be doing, is that what defines you?
How’d you get involved with painting murals?
I was inspired by a lot of graffiti artists, and I just liked painting on walls. I like making big paintings, so painting murals gives me that ability to make really large, impactful work that can be seen by everyone, by the public, as opposed to creating artwork that’s just for a very small select group of collectors or gallerists. I like to make art that engages with people. It’s just a great way to connect to people by painting murals. And it’s great to paint outside. It’s also a way of leaving my mark in cities.
What’s the coolest place you’ve ever traveled to do a mural?
The most unexpected place from a cultural perspective was probably going to Saudi Arabia to paint in Riyadh just because there’s so much of a cultural difference between growing up in America and the U.S. and our perceptions of other people, particularly in Saudi Arabia. If my goal is to connect with people through art, going to places like Riyadh is such a wonderful experience because art breaks down a lot of perceived cultural differences, and it’s a great way to open up conversations with people because we, regardless of whatever our cultural differences might be, can look at art, whether it’s a painting, a mural, a song, and now we have a shared connection to something. And once you start to build those little shared connections, well then you can break down a lot of other perceived misconceptions about people. That was probably my most interesting place to go from a cultural perspective, to be able to share that with a different society and hope to inspire. Another reason why I like to make public art is just to inspire people to do stuff. If I can paint an abstract mural on the side of this building, figure out how to do it, get it funded — you could figure out whatever it is, that thing that you’re trying to do.
Is there anything particularly that inspired the Lovers Lane bridge mural?
The goal behind changing that space was that it had been a bit of a homeless encampment for a while. They put down those big rocks and wanted to do something on that wall to make it more inviting for the community. It’s really a way of just changing that little piece of landscape so that it feels more inviting and more welcoming to the community. The concept is, do something that’s colorful, bright, and you’ll see in the center, there’s a flower that’s growing out of it. And it’s like a sign of rebirth, of life popping out of this, of what once was kind of a little dark recess by the highway.
This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
