I was born in Boston in 1979, brought up multi-cultural, traveling, and drawing steadily since I can remember. After university, where I studied economics and urban planning, it was street art and the public realm of cities where I became a student. I moved to Barcelona and then Hong Kong to continue studies and creative work at the intersection of urban design and political economy. In 2008 I moved to New York City, where an ex-boss suggested I be true to creative callings and visions - “if you have to go into the jungle and write books, do it.”
Following his advice I gifted myself “the year of the artist”, moving into a low rent industrial space, enrolling in the Art Students League and visiting the museums and libraries, taking out books to study and painting throughout the nights. At 30 years old, I can remember my first attempts at painting. “Your drawings and photography are much better” said my teacher, Hugo Bastidias at the ASL. But eventually, I was able to squeak out a living from my artwork. First selling them on the streets in Union Square, and then slowly showing in exhibitions; learning a bit of the hustle of sales, class and institutions.
After gaining a basic understanding and command over the creative process and visual storytelling, I began Artefacting. A vision of applying a creative practice with intention to social challenge and situation. The first project being to create and tell a story, multi-dimensionally, of a dynamic informal recycling “slum” in Bombay at risk of demolition/expropriation by contemporary urbanization. It turned into a practice that would give light to 20 collective projects before culminating & terminating with Nueva Patria/Lugar Comun in Oaxaca Mexico in 2017.
In 2017 I created another practice - a market-based fair-trade project called Rezpiral, working with autonomous campesino mezcaleros of Oaxaca Mexico, and their mezcales, designing, presenting, and navigating the commercialization and representation of such artisanal products and ways through sale and distribution in major US markets.