I also grew up in religion, and even though I’m not involved in it anymore, I’ve found there’s always an underlying subconscious amount of religion present in my
life. Do you find that it seeps into your life, and into
your art?
Oh yeah, for example, my necklace is a rosary. I took the
cross off and replaced it with a paint brush. It has the two
things I keep closest to my heart, which is God and my
ability to paint. No matter what, the spiritual always follows, it’s my backbone. No matter how frustrating life gets,
I can always fall back on that. I would never preach to you,
or quote scripture. But that’s because for the life of me I
don’t remember any. Actually, I think I know one. And it
goes: “Jesus wept”.
I think you misquoted that verse! Does the
red circle you paint have
anything to do with your
faith?
Nah, the red circle started
as a joke almost six years
ago. I used to always love
artists that used gimmicks
in their art to capture attention.
Anyways. There’s two
things I put in my work,
the rubber ducky, and the
red circle. We had a store
a couple years ago. I did a
piece, a monkey with a rubber ducky on his shoulder,
with a red circle as a target.
But then it was the thing
that people recognized
the most. And it has more
meaning to me now. And
also, there’s the underlying
“windows to the soul”.
I hate painting eyes, man.
I find most artists do. It’s
either eyes or feet. My
thing was feet and eyes,
but now I’ve started working on feet too.
the art district in Miami. What used to be the worst place
in Miami over ,
years ago. Now there’s Gucci, Prada,
and Tom Ford right across from the school. Our school
was what started the standard for high art and what the
design district should be. When I was in school, there was
nothing in the area. We had top of the line industry standard. I was using Photoshop when it was Photoshop or .
What is it now, something like Photoshop 97?
Yeah, I’m going to stop talking, I feel old now. Every year
there’s something new and it’s the same damn thing.
So the foundations of your education were design-oriented. Where did you go to college?
My first year of college, I went
pre-med. My mom said, “Fine,
you got art out of your system,
now go do something that will
make you money.” So I went
to FIU. And I couldn’t do it. I
switched my school, without my
mom knowing. Ended up in CCS,
College for Creative Studies in
Detroit. Started in animation,
didn’t dig it, switched to studio
art. [Detroit] was fun, but never
again, it was too cold.
I feel you. I lived in Memphis my
freshman year. When did you
move to Orlando?
. And I got involved with the
B-Side in
. Back then
it wasn’t B-Side yet. They had a
foundation here and there. It started because Swam, Tre, Tobar, and
Lemus, they all knew each other.
I think they all went to school together. One day a friend of mine
told me to come downtown and
start shooting photos of random
people. And I didn’t want to do
that. Well, I did, and we ran into
Tre. And [Tre] said, “Yeah, matta
fact, Swam has a shop.” Well, the
following weekend I went to the
shop. Met Swam, started talking,
and that was it.
We Use To Be King, acrylic on canvas
Well let’s go back to the
beginning.
Studying
When I f