When you visit Hers’ house, a green array of succulent and leafy plants greet you from behind the iron gate. There are so many plants, they almost cover her parents’ home from sight. At 14-years-old, she started painting flowers inspired by the garden her dad has cultivated throughout the years. Hers is a 20-year-old street artist from South Central Los Angeles whose most visible artwork has been flowers. She, however, says she is far from being a delicate flower herself. She loves Led Zeppelin and gore.
MY IMMEDIATE REACTION ABOUT WHAT YOU DO IS STREET ART, BUT HOW DO YOU DESCRIBE YOURSELF AND WHAT YOU DO?
“My message is more eco-friendly: flowers coming out of the concrete. When I was younger my brother would come home with bags of cans. He gave me my first can because he owed me some money. I was like, ‘How are you going to pay me back?’ He’s like, ‘Oh, you can have some cans.’ I’m like, ‘Oh, alright.’”
She was 12 then.
“I went through different phases “I grew up in South Central. There’s graffiti everywhere.”
The fact that she saw spray painted figures, murals, and letters everywhere she went made her want to give graffiti a go.
“My friends were from these different crews.”
She started painting at 14.
WHEN DID YOUR INVOLVEMENT IN STREET ART BEGIN?
“Vile he has been part of this class/ workshop on Saturdays at Self-Help Graphics. It’s this art studio place. They have galleries and a selection of artwork. They have art shows. Well he works there. It’s in Boyle Heights on 1st Street in front of the Gold Line. I would post my stuff on Twitter and Instagram and I was following him. And I guess he started following me too so he started looking at my stuff. And he says, ‘Hey I have this class on Saturdays. You should stop by and I could help you paint.’ I guess he saw potential.”
Hers posted her work on Twitter and that’s how Vile, a well-known graffiti artist and her now mentor, found out about her. She met many other writers through the workshops he teaches. A lot of them are from the San Fernando Valley.
“Now we’re more like friends. He still teaches me. He still teaches me a lot, but we get along like friends, like buddies. But he’ll be like, ‘No, what are you doing?’, and I’m like, ‘Gosh let me do what I’m doing.’
She said she takes his advice to heart, but she doesn’t let him steer control of her creative process.
“He’s always saying that I don’t take his advice but I do. I just don’t like people telling me what to do so I’ll be like ‘shut up’, but I’ll do it.
HOW LONG AGO DID YOU START GOING TO SELF HELP GRAPHICS & ART?
“Like a little bit over a year now. I still go to the classes. I go to the studio during the week and to hang out, or there’s also silkscreening, or I’ll hang out with the other guys that go to the class. We’re from the same crew, ER crew, a graffiti crew.”
DOES ER STAND FOR SOMETHING?
Everyday Ritual. Painting is an everyday ritual. We try to do it every day. We’ll hang out there, it’s kind of like our headquarters.
She is currently in the Everyday Ritual street art crew.The self-help graphics studio in Boyle Heights is where they practice and hang out.
HOW DID ER START?
“It started a few years back. Actually [Vile] started ER over here in Los Angeles, and theres also an ER in the valley. And so the guys from here linked up with the guys from there. They’ll come by and we’ll paint together. They don’t care how far it is, because it’s LA. People do notice stuff in the valley because there are only a few graffiti artists in the valley, but here in L.A. more people are going to see it. That’s kind of the point of graffiti. You want people to see it and like you can take pictures now, but if people see it in person, then you’ll get more recognition. That’s not to say that you’re in graffiti for the fame, because you really aren’t going to be getting fame, a lot of people don’t know who you are. You want your work to be recognized and it just feels good. Even if people don’t recognize your work, I’ll pass by my spots or whatever and it feels like really cool like ‘That’s me.’ Yesterday me and the homegirl were on the Blue Line passing Flower and Washington. I have this spot in the alley and I’m like ‘Oh look over there,’ and she’s like ‘Oh are you there, are you there?’, like saying it really loud and I’m like ‘Shut up.’ I was just trying to show her and she’s like ‘Which one are you, the pink one?’ and I’m like ‘Shut up.’ I want people to see it, thats the point, but I don’t want to get in trouble for it. I want to keep doing it. I honestly don’t think that graffiti is bad. I don’t think it’s bad at all. People give it a stigma because it’s illegal, but you look around and you see all these advertisements that people are pushing at you and it’s ugly. It’s ugly to see these bland letters and straight lines telling you to buy something like, ‘Oh rent me, pay me, buy me or eat me!’ or whatever and it’s just annoying. Well if they can tell me to do something, then why can’t I put my own name on there? It’s just stupid to have to pay for a spot on the street when its all public. In graffiti theres a lot of older people, a lot of OGs. You get to meet more of them. A lot of the people i know that are graffiti artists are older than me. I think Vile is the oldest one that I know. He’s 37. For the most part, they’re older.”
IS IT INTIMIDATING TO WORK WITH MEN?
No. Being the only girl sometimes will get you a bad reputation, but you have to know how to enjoy yourself because there are a few cute guys, and you wanna make out with them or something but you can’t. It can get you in trouble. Practically everyone knows each other or they’ll know someone who knows someone else. Word gets around and you don’t wanna mess up like that. It’s already hard enough getting respect as a painter, but people will always hate on you and if they think you’re a slut. They’ll say, ‘Well she’s a slut don’t take her seriously,’ or like, ‘Yeah, hit her up she’s a slut.’ Women who paint don’t easily see the same respect that comes to other men who paint.”
IS THAT WHAT YOU’VE NOTICED?
“Well I don’t really hear that about myself but about other girls. On Instagram especially, there are girls that will post their graffiti, and they’re with their cans and with their hair done dressed up with makeup on. They’re giving off a different image. Are you really doing it for the painting or are you doing it because you known that guys will look at you because of it? Thats not why I do it, but it does get you attention from men. That’s also a reason why i don’t have a boyfriend because it will just complicate things.”
HOW?
“He’ll get jealous. I’ve always been the not jealous type, but the guys that I seem to meet will either be jealous or intimidated. Just because i paint they’ll be intimidated by me. Not to toot my own horn, but its true. Guys wanna be better at something than their girlfriend. Or there will be guys that don’t want you to do it. There will be guys that’ll be intimidated by other guys, intimidated by you, or theres also the guys that don’t paint, that don’t know much about that. It’s hard to find a boyfriend if you’re a painter, but even if you do, painting complicates the relationship. It’s not that painting requires you to dedicate time to it, it’s that you want to dedicate all your time to doing what you love doing. So until i find someone that can be my partner in crime, I don’t want to rush into anything. I have a hard time making emotional connections with people. I’ll be called cold-hearted sometimes. I remember there was this one guy, he paints also, I saw him painting a couple of times. I was painting this wall and he was there watching me because he was also painting it and then he said, ‘Oh we can be the next Dabs and Myla,’ this couple that paints together. They’re really cool. They have a similar style or I guess they developed their style together so like when they paint it all looks like one person did it, but it’s both of them. But yeah he said we could be the next Dabs and Myla being all cheesy because I was painting flowers and he told me that I was a delicate flower that needs to be taken care of and I’m like, ‘What dude, I’m as delicate as a brick. I don’t need no man.’ It was just cheesy and I don’t like that.”
SO YOU GET ALONG WITH THE GUYS IN YOUR CREW?
“Yeah, they’re really supportive. Me being the only girl, they would give me a hard time at first. They’ll be talking crap but whatever, I don’t get butthurt about it. It’s just teasing because I am the only girl. It doesn’t get to me because I am confident in my work. But what did get to me I remember this one time we were all hanging out and there was this guy hanging out with the crew. He was trying to get in the crew, but he didn’t know how to paint. He could draw really well, he just didn’t know his color schemes. We were hanging out talking crap and taking jabs at people and he called me a groupie, like a graff groupie, because I was the only girl there. I was like, ‘Dude shut up, I’m not a graff groupie.’ The guys in the crew were like , ‘yeah she actually paints with us’, and he was like all whatever and then again he said it, he called me a graff groupie. I was like , ‘Shut the fuck up. I’m not a groupie.’ He pissed me off because first of all, I’m actually in the crew and I actually paint and put in work and like who are you to come in and call me a groupie in front of the crew, it’s disrespectful. I just told him shut the fuck up to get out of my face. It got me really mad just because he had no idea what he was talking about. He was just there hanging out. He was learning how to paint. If anything he was the graff groupie.”
She was really angry about being called a graff groupie. She doesn’t like it when people don’t take her seriously.
“That started causing drama. There’s these panels that we practice painting on at self-help and he works at home depot and he had brought the paint so we could practice with. He said ,’Oh I stole this from work’, but he was probably trying to sound cool. He probably paid for it. All the other panels had legit pieces there and you always top the ones that are not the best. You leave those, let those run for a while and eventually they’ll get topped. So then I said okay i’ll just paint over his. I got a can and I was practicing my name, because I’m trying to develop my letters. Then the other guys came out. Vile came out ‘ooh hers just dissed blah blah blah.’ I was like ooh shit , because I felt bad and it didn’t looked finished to me.”
Rather than create something big out of nothing she calmly explained she thought the panel was left unfinished and wanted to start a new project.It was a misunderstanding.
“I didn’t mean to diss him. When you write on top of their stuff, it’s called dissing, it’s disrespectful, that you’re disrespecting them.and that starts drama. There’s always going to be drama sometimes being the only girl. There’s legals, which you ask for permission. And then there’s when you actually go bombing. You have to scope out the area and make sure it’s a good spot. You don’t want to go and just paint over anyone because you don’t want to start drama. If drama does start, they’ll look for you and they’ll go over it. They drew a penis over one of my flowers. It was probably little kids but I have to go and fix it. I’ve already let it run for a while. At first it was a tag and then I went over their tag. Then they drew a penis over it. Tags you can go over. There’s rules and you have to be careful There’s areas you don’t just go over and paint. I want to go to East LA and paint because theres a lot of good spots over there. I’m not very mobile and I don’t like going on my own. I don’t like calling guys over and saying lets go paint, especially if I don’t know them. It takes planning to know where and when to paint. I want my own car. I think once i get my own car I’ll be painting a lot more.”
WHAT WORRIES YOU AS A STREET ARTIST?
“I worry about someone coming up and stabbing me, like a crackhead or some guys in a van. The area that we live in isn’t safe. I love graffiti and I love art but I don’t want to risk my life for it.”
Having a car would make Hers feel more in control of the situation and therefore safer.
“You can’t paint when you’re dead. I’m kind of selfish. The thing about graffiti is that since it’s out in the streets, its going to be for everyone, but most importantly, its a feeling that you get that you have to act on. If i don’t paint for a while ill feel lazy. Some people get satisfaction out of going running every morning and feel that their day is accomplished. When I paint i feel that my day is accomplished.”
Hers says that while her art will be accessible to the many different people in her neighborhood, she paints for the sheer satisfaction she obtains out of painting graffiti. “I’ve been doing it a lot more lately.”
WHAT IS YOUR ARTISTIC STYLE?
“I think mine is really cute sometimes. I hate it. I wish i could draw like a guy.” Hers says that she loves her neighborhood., but she can’t deny the danger it poses to her as a female street artist and resident in general. “You wouldn’t really paint around here in the neighborhood.”
Hers describes the immediate area surrounding her house as hands-off for painting opportunities because they are guarded by local gangs who will threaten your life for marking over their territory.
“You want to go out into the main streets. If you paint out in the neighborhood there could be cholos. They mark their territory to let you know this is their area and that’s how you know not to paint there. If they see you painting out in the neighborhood at night they will chase you. Some of them have guns, some of them have knives. I already know that. I know what happens to other people. Thats stupid. I don’t want to die.”
She goes into a story about a boy that used to paint. He started hanging out with a local gang and he was eventually shot dead. She says that growing up in her neighborhood, you have to make friends with people that won’t expose you to danger.
“I don’t like painting at night because of the area that i live in. It depends if somebody picks me up. It depends on who you hang out with. I think thats what helps you to survive. You gotta know who to hang out with.”
WHAT TYPE OF ISSUES COME UP BY VIRTUE OF BEING A FEMALE STREET ARTIST?
“There’s always going to be a perv telling you something. I’m pretty sure guys who write don’t face that. I should get a girlfriend.” She thinks about that nuisance and jokes that if men thought she was a lesbian maybe they would leave her alone. “That’s why I have two separate Instagram accounts. There are some girls that will post their graffiti and then they’ll post some pictures of themselves half naked and I’m like where’s the fucking respect?”
Hers keeps one professional Instagram dedicated strictly to her work as a graffiti artist. She keeps another personal Instagram account.
“I think its more real because we’re born around it. Over here the scene is bigger and everybody sees it. I want to paint everywhere. That’s the point. I want to be everywhere. The fact that we’re in L.A., I already feel like I’m doing something. It’s here, it’s New York, It’s Chicago. It’s all the big cities. People stick to bombing sometimes and the tagging. I’m all about it. I love it, but you wanna grow. You don’t want to stick to just doing throwies. You want to develop your style.”
A throwie is a the basic version of a graffiti bomb which is an explosive, colorful, and bold creation illustrating a name.
“It’s an addiction.”
almendra 