Husband and wife duo DabsMyla are known for creating eye-catching pop art inspired works across several mediums. A completely collaborative partnership, the couple refuses to take individual credit for any of their work, preferring to blur their solo contributions into something that is holistically a DabsMyla affair, whether it's site-specific street murals, sets and logos for the the MTV Movie Awards, or even refurbishing old buildings into surreal cartoon-inspired environs.
Moving from Melbourne to Los Angeles in 2009, the pair became enchanted by the city’s sights and sounds. Complex recently caught up with DabsMyla in their new home to spend a day soaking up their favorite parts of the city, from their favorite record shops to the most iconic ice cream in Los Angeles.
“When we first moved to Los Angeles from Australia we moved into a place in Hollywood, it was actually right down the street from this mural. We wanted to live in the mix and really get into the city. We liked the idea of being able to see the Hollywood sign all of the time, it just felt quite LA."
"One day we were just painting with some friends of ours in the alley back behind these buildings, and the shop owner asked if we would paint a mural on the corner wall. So we did that with some friends like six years ago, and for us it just felt a bit dated and old, so we wanted to repaint it. We love all of the different natural landscapes in LA and knew that we wanted to paint flowers, and talked about a bunch of different words and came up with these.”
“We love coming to Skylight and looking through all of the books. We could spend hours here. At home we have tons of art books, of other artists we admire. But in the studio, the things that we reference most are a bit more random. We have a lot of old architecture and interior design books, or old animation books and still life paintings and advertising."
"We have some amazing old interior design books that have sections on really specific things and small details, like this section about old matchbooks. They’re really cool and have a lot of trinkets and small details from the ‘50s and ‘60s which we love.”
“Music is such a big thing for us, we both have always listened to music, but now that we are painting in the studio for so many hours every week, we listen to it constantly. We always go back and forth making each other's playlists. We also try and see as much live music as we can, it’s nice at the end of a long workday to go and experience it."
"We found Freakbeat because it’s right in the neighborhood where we do all of our grocery shopping and errands. It has such an amazing selection but it’s also the perfect size—sometimes the big stores can be so overwhelming and you end up not getting anything, because you don’t even know where to start. But we always find something here, it’s kind of our go-to.”
“We love The Big Chill, it’s like the OG frozen yogurt spot—it looks like it’s from the ‘80s. A friend of ours took us here when we first moved because it was his favorite, and we’ve been coming back for years."
"We always take friends who are visiting, especially from Australia, to The Big Chill. It’s on the way to the airport so it’s usually the very last thing we do before they leave, and it’s fun to end the trip at a place that is such an iconic LA institution.”
