He painted murals in the city, including the ones in Stevenson Park, as well as the horse mural in the downtown area.
He moved to the area because his wife, Rachel, a Friendswood native, wanted to enroll their children in Friendswood ISD. She still teaches there, though the Socies moved to League City a year ago.
“I love this area,” Socie said.
Socie is responsible for several of the murals around Friendswood, including those at Stevenson Park and the horse mural on the side of the Hometown Center, where Funky Monkey is located.
While he has made murals all over the Houston area, his first mural in Friendswood was of birds on the side of the bathroom in Stevenson Park. Socie painted the murals for free so his children, whom he took to the park regularly, could see his work.
“It was important to me that my kids could see my work, since I am gone a lot,” Socie said.
One of his most recent trips took him to Moscow, where he painted a 20-story building—the tallest mural in the world—with a few other muralists from around the world.
Socie grew in notoriety through word of mouth and people seeing his work around the community or on his Instagram, Socie said.
“Most people call me knowing about my work and what they want,” he said.
However, Socie was not always so well known nor was his work good at the beginning, he said.
“I have no natural talent. I have a skill that I have learned over a thousand bad paintings,” Socie said.
Because of how hard he worked for his skill, he tells his children they can be anything they want, so long as they work hard for it.
“Hard work outperforms talent every day of the week,” he said.
Socie has been drawn to art, particularly large-scale, spray paint work, since he was a child. He started out with train graffiti as a teenager and grew into working on commissioned murals.
He was one of the least talented painters of his friends, he said; however, he worked to hone his craft. Now, he has painted for the cities of Friendswood and Houston as well as private entities, including NightLight Pediatrics and the Houston Texans.
He is able to paint quickly, which makes it possible for him to do this as a side hustle. He also works with Anat Ronen, who painted the mural on the other side of the building in downtown Friendswood.
While he did not work with Ronen on any of his Friendswood murals, he did just finish a mural with her in Galveston.
Socie paints when he is not working his day job running electrical for a pharmaceutical company. Even when he is not working on a commissioned piece, he is still painting.
“I paint whether I am getting paid or not,” Socie said.
