What have you been up to since back in the day, where are you at these days?
I would call myself an Artist now… musical… visual… A.J. and Tim taught me how to DJ. (A.J. would have parties or get-togethers and let me play records even though I had no idea what I was doing for a long time.) He taught me how to spin records and stuff. This is something that I still do in different forms today; I mix music to listen to and share. I give it away digitally (the internet can be a great tool) when I have time to finish projects I’ve started.

For the past few years I’ve gotten into painting on canvas, mostly minimal, abstract styles. For some reason I really like to use raw canvas and water down my paints. Think of art like Morris Louis maybe… or John M. White. It’s a trip really, because I never was interested in anything but skating and hip hop before this. Not to say writing/graffiti is not art because I know it is, but I fell headfirst into contemporary art. I had this internship that developed into a job at a high-end gallery, the Sylvia White Gallery, where we would show amazing work consistently. I spent a lot of time around John M. White — an amazing person and artist — indescribable really. There is so much I learned from both he and Sylvia and I am forever grateful. Being around artists and the art while majoring in Studio Art at the same time completely put my perspective of it all upside down, in a good way.

I met people during my years at Cal State University Channel Islands that I will take with me and be friends with for the rest of my life; absolutely priceless. Raul, Korina, Mary, Ashleigh. Somehow the art I was creating and observing, and the people I was around, fueled this gratitude I already had for expression and life, and I was able to find comfort and focus in actually creating art on a canvas instead of just music. I still work for the gallery remotely, although I moved to Arizona a couple of months back with my girlfriend of 6 years. She is pretty amazing. People say their girlfriend is amazing etc., but I don’t think I could put into words how much love and respect I have for her. So for now it’s Amanda, friends, family, my job, art, mixing music, working out (nothing crazy). I aim to be healthy and to be able to have the strength to skate for a long time to come, sooner rather than later. Since moving out here I caught up a bit with JB Snyder. Some of you might remember him, he skated for a long time. This man is a great artist, check out his stuff if you get a chance. He lives here in Phoenix and is neck high in the art scene around the area. He took Amanda and I out on one of the First Fridays (art walk type deal). Phoenix has a genuine scene down here and JB is in the thick of it.