About the artists
Melbourne natives Dabs Myla have
lived and worked in Los Angeles since 2009, when they fell head over heels
for the city’s glorious weather and superlative donuts. Inspired by travel,
food, cartoons, graffiti and the wonderful chaos of their life
together as a couple, their paintings juxtapose Dabs’ mischievous and
sometimes ribald characters with Myla’s meticulous cityscapes, innovative
fonts and playful patterns. Dabs
started painting graffiti in 1995, and began teaching Myla the ropes of
writing about ten years later, after they met while studying illustration in
art school and fell in love. Soon afterward, they decided they preferred
their collaborative pieces to their individual work, and from that point on,
they worked together exclusively, as Dabs Myla. Ever since their move to
California, their schedule has been booked solid with gallery installations
all over the world. Outside of galleries, their artistic output includes
poster designs for bands including Blink 182 and Pearl Jam, marketing
concepts for brands like Adidas and Sanrio, and collaborations with the
legendary Seventh Letter artist collective.
In recent years, they have been invited to paint walls in places as diverse
as Rio de Janeiro, London, Detroit, Norway and Tahiti, but wherever you
might find them, there is one thing you can always depend upon—Dabs and Myla
will be side by side, savoring whatever life sends their way.
About the
authors
Amanda Erlanson is a writer, art collector and editor of the art blog Erratic Phenomena.
She grew up in backwoods New Hampshire without electricity or television,
her nose buried in dusty old books, where she discovered a passion for
Golden Age illustration. While slacking off from her job shelving books in
the art history library of Dartmouth College, she learned most of what she
knows about art. After earning her bachelor’s degree from Dartmouth, she
headed west to pursue graduate studies at California Institute of the Arts.
She now lives in Los Angeles, where she divides her time between the
entertainment industry and the art world, and delves into the hearts and
minds of her favorite artists through her exhaustively researched
interviews. Recently, she co-authored the books Andrew Hem: Dreams
Towards Reality, Edwin Ushiro: Gathering Whispers, Chris
Berens: Mapping Infinity and Heroes & Villains, and contributed
essays about Mark Ryden to his Rizzoli collection The Gay ‘90s and
his massive Taschen monograph Pinxit.
Roger Gastman began writing graffiti as a teenager in Bethesda, Maryland, and later parlayed his love for it into a legitimate career, becoming a trusted mediator between the underground art scenes and mainstream culture. He founded and published two respected pop-culture magazines—While You Were Sleeping and Swindle (co-publisher with Shepard Fairey)—as well as more than 30 highly sought-after art books. Gastman served as consulting producer for Banksy’s Exit Through the Gift Shop, which earned an Academy Award nomination for best documentary. In 2013, HarperCollins released Gastman’s The History of American Graffiti—the definitive story behind the most influential art form in the last 100 years—and Jeffrey Deitch asked him to co-curate Art in the Streets at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, which is the first comprehensive U.S. museum survey of graffiti and street art. He curated PUMP ME UP: D.C. subculture of the 1980s at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in 2013 and produced the companion documentary narrated by Henry Rollins, The Legend of COOL “DISCO” DAN, an educational film about D.C. culture and their most prolific graffiti artist.
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