One person who greatly influenced me is my older brother Emerson. As a child Emerson was my hero. He had an exuberant and creative spirit that I looked up to, and his interests in comics and video games was instrumental to my artistic development. Many of the stories, character designs and settings in these pieces of media he introduced me to became foundational to my visual library from which I pull to create my current work as a traditional Animator. My brother would also create and draw his own comic books, which inspired me to write my own stories and sparked my life-long interest in drawing. However; today my older brother is far different from the person I looked up to as a child. Life takes its toll on individuals, and that light he once carried in his youth has now been buried and extinguished. My siblings and I were raised in a religious cult called the Moonies. We were expected to get arranged marriages as teenagers, did not receive proper schooling and were engaged in many bizarre rituals to honor the man who founded the cult and claimed to be the reincarnation of Jesus Christ. My brother was especially involved in the church, and after breaking away from it, lost his sense of place in the world. This, in conjunction with our mother’s death due to lung cancer, and a financially unstable transition into adulthood-- left him trapped in a cycle of low-wage unfulfilling jobs. Today my brother lives in New York working as a server and going to bars in his free time. Although he initially wanted to pursue acting, he has never had the courage to follow through with it and has been in a cycle of self-doubt for over a decade. My own story could have followed this same path. In my mid-twenties I felt financially trapped and lonely and like life was happening to me without any ability to design it for myself. However; being able to see my older brother’s path renewed my resolve to take control of my life. At age 25 I began drawing every day, and a year later I enrolled in art school, which I previously had never thought would be possible. Today, although I still struggle to survive, working multiple jobs to pay for art-school, I feel as though I have taken ownership of my life, and I am grateful to be able to learn from the life of my older brother whose passion once inspired me so much. I see a lot of animators drawn to Animation for what it already is. They want to recreate more of the same children’s shows, super powered anime, and edgy “adult” humor television shows. But I am drawn to it because I have a vision of what animation could be. I want to expand the potential of animated media. I believe animation can be something profound that can touch the human spirit in an utterly unique way. I want to challenge the notion of large studios, that nuanced stories, and stories from/about minority groups are “risky” and fight the attitude that puts profits over human connection. I want to champion Animation as Art and challenge any notions that try to put it in a box. I will break Animation free from its constraints to any specific genre. I will tell stories that activate the audience to think deeply about themselves and their connections to others and the world around them. I will tell stories from under-represented groups, and work to platform other individuals from minority groups.

My art practice in informed by my deep belief in the distinction between Entertainment and Art. I define entertainment as a form of escapism that distracts the viewer from reality through the use of spectacle. Whereas Art brings the viewer into a closer relationship with reality, by contextualizing our existence within relation to time, space, nature, and our fellow humans. As an Animator, my medium is often regarded as childish or frivolous. I hope to counter a lack of thoughtful engagement with media as an Artform, and the assumption that audiences should be passive in their intake of media. I believe that by creating stories that utilize spectacle, not as a distraction to mask a lack of meaning, but as a tool to reinforce and strengthen emotional, spiritual and mental associations—I can create powerful animated experiences that engage the audience’s curiosity to explore within themselves, to spark conversations within their community, and incite them to have an active relationship with what they consume. I hope to champion media literacy in an age where we are oversaturated with media that is flashy, and disposable-- and where Art is regarded as superfluous instead of as a conduit for bringing meaning to our lives. I hope to achieve this goal by subverting the trappings of media tropes and the risk-averse nature of corporate studio systems. For example: as a mixed-race person who loves fantasy, I hope to one day create animated fantasy movies that take inspiration from the myths and histories of black/brown cultures. The overwhelming majority of fantasy settings are based off of medieval Europe. There is a clear gap in the fantasy landscape, and the histories and myths of historically under-represented cultures offer an amazing pool of inspiration to draw from. I believe this shift in approach to fantasy is one example of how Animated media can broaden a viewer’s horizons and incite curiosity; while simultaneously creating pride and representation for historically under-represented groups. Taking care to ensure credit is given to those communities, so as not to appropriate in ways that disregard the origins of these aesthetics. This means involving representatives of a culture in the creative process, and ensuring that revenue from the project is circulating back into the community that inspired the setting and story. In this paradigm, fantasy is not just escapism, but rather a tool through which we can explore and interact with our real world.

I’m an artist occupied by waking visions, snapshots of moments that exist within the landscape of my psyche. I see tall monolithic buildings in a cold salt desert. I hear whirring mechanical parts, humming as they process an unfathomable amount of data. I watch as a heron extends its long wings to lift its body above the reflective surface of a river. I walk the edge between dreams and waking life, processing imagery as metaphor, and deconstructing the coded language of the human senses. My intention is to transport the viewer into this realm. To grip them by their soul and hold them suspended in the fluid of their own humanity. In other words, my goal is to create drawings that resonate with people and give shape to complex feelings that may not otherwise be articulated. As a child, I would sometimes awake from sleeping in a semi-lucid state. Although I could tell I was awake, it seemed my sensory input was still being filtered through my subconscious dreaming mind. It was disorienting and scary as a young child. I still have memories of waking up in a panic, feeling as though I was stuck in between worlds and could not escape. It is here that I first became fascinated with the transitory nature of our perceptions. Later in life I was exposed to prolific science fiction and fantasy story tellers like Alejandro Jodorowsky, Philip K. Dick and H.R. Giger, and for the first time I felt I could point to something that described the way I felt as a child. It is my goal to create visual stories that hold a mirror to the viewer and conjure those peculiar states of mind that are all too often forgotten in the mundanity of our everyday lives.