I always thought success as an artist was something that was determined after you died; furthermore, if you actually made it, you just ended up killing yourself anyway. Thus, it wasn’t about money; it was about creating something worth remembering.
I have neither fucked a Guggenheim, disfigured myself, nor tried to promote my artwork in any meaningful way. So, you've probably never heard of me. After discovering paper and pens, people started calling me an artist; I believed them and, over time, became obsessed with the idea. I was the last love child of the seventies and first disowned bastard of the eighties, and painting on things without permission is what I’ve been arrested for the most. Now, living in Hawaii, with dozens of paintings spread around the globe, and most of them unsold in storage crates in Colorado, I look back. I understand that I may have no legacy, that few people may ever even read these words; regardless, this is my story.
My grandmother was my first art teacher. We would join forces, completing Care Bear coloring books as fast as my mom could buy them. My favorite crayon was green, while Grandma was more versatile. I can still remember sitting at the dining room table, hearing her remind me to stay within the lines.
My mom, a saint, also an artist, had her original paintings and drawings hanging in the house in Syracuse where she was studying to be an architect. While I was still cutting my teeth, she took me to museums, galleries, and social events I wasn't interested in attending. However, I was susceptible to bribery, and with the promise of a new G.I. Joe action figure, she would get a very polite, well-behaved son. Coincidentally, through this regular transactional arrangement, I was shaped into an adorable and well-mannered child with a massive G.I. Joe collection by the time I was four years old.
As a sprouting artist and curious child, I would pay close attention to the artwork wherever she took me. My eyes and head would spiral into the paintings, getting so close to the canvas that a picture's reality broke: shapes and colors, circles, squares, irregular triangles, pixelated blobs, and drips of glossy paint were all that I could see. Then I would spiral out, trying to figure out the exact distance from the canvas at which it magically became a face, building, or cloud again.
After getting her degree, my mother moved us to Port Orange, Florida. At Spruce Creek Elementary, I met my first professional art teacher, Mr. Evans. His encouragement and enthusiasm were infectious. I would not be surprised if he were one hundred and thirty years old and still teaching art today; he loved his job. Even though it was kind of a crash course for a six-year-old in artist techniques, it was a formative experience.
I realized early in school I was not going to be a mathematician or spelling bee champ. I was going to be an artist, so other subjects weren’t a priority; they felt like electives. I would just listen to my teacher while I drew pictures in my notebook, instead of taking actual notes or paying attention. This made the day go by fast. By the end of my second grade, my marks were so bad that I was nearly held back, and I was required to attend summer school.
I met Michael Streetman the next year. We had reputations as artists but had never been in the same class. Our common interests bound our friendship instantly. While Mike was hyper and medicated, I was not. Mike’s mom would take us to buy comic books from a twenty-five-cent crate at the local bookstore. We didn't read them; we just studied the illustrations, and it didn't take long for us to decide we should make a comic book of our own.
We spent most of our classes together passing drawings back and forth. After a few months, we gathered our characters and decided to create the first issue of Dork Dude and Ninja Nerd, which was a heroic duo inspired by Batman and Snake-Eyes from G.I. Joe. We built a catalogue of over sixty characters, drew posters, comic strips, a full-color comic book, and even a narrated slide show for an AV Club presentation (which were common in the late eighties). Mrs. Streetman was so impressed and delusional that she submitted our comic book to Marvel, on our behalf, though we never heard back.
Mike and I also began making a series of stop-motion animated shorts with our G.I. Joes and a camcorder, titled The Fearsome Four. We were forced to abruptly shut down the creative studio we built when it was discovered that we were, in fact, vandalizing a vacant home in his neighborhood. In our defense as 10-year-olds, the idea of someone moving out of a house meant that the home was abandoned and we could claim it as our new clubhouse and redecorate. That was, however, not the case, and after we were arrested, we were not allowed to hang out anymore.
In middle school at Silver Sands, my art teacher was Mrs. Bufford. I still liked to draw, but in middle school I stopped playing with G.I. Joes and started thinking a lot about girls. I have been obsessed with beauty and the opposite sex since I found out there was an opposite sex. They still fascinate me, more specifically beauty and attraction, and mysterious things like love. I remember wanting to marry Shannon Frost in kindergarten. I had no idea what marriage was; it was just a word that grown-ups used when they were really attracted to someone, which wasn’t a big deal because not a lot of kids dated in elementary school.
However, in middle school it felt like you weren’t cool if you didn’t have a girlfriend, and people just paired up with someone. I’m pretty sure the first two girls that I dated, I barely talked to at any point; we just didn’t have anything in common. We would eat lunch together once in a while. Until I met Jennifer Dunn. She made me laugh, and she was cute, but she didn't want to be my girlfriend.
For me, the 7th grade production of You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown was one of the most consequential milestones of my life before it spiraled into decades of missed opportunities, unrequited love, light drug use, alcohol, and pornography.
My friend Robert Barrington, whom I was later arrested with, convinced me to join the school play by selling me on how much school I would get to skip and get out of class for. I was part of the stage crew, working on the artwork specifically, and was not on stage or involved with the actual show. The crew consisted of a group of 6th, 7th, and 8th graders. I was excited because Mr. Evans, my elementary school art teacher, was in charge of our group (although it felt like he didn’t really want to be there). Instead of using the skills he'd taught us. He showed us cheats and shortcuts, projecting the scenes onto giant brown paper with a projector, then tracing the images. Instead of paint cans, we had powdered pigments that we mixed with water, which was more economical.
Jaclynn Lynn, an 8th grader, and I took the job very seriously, working side by side every day after school. We completed all the backgrounds for the play as well as the decorations for the walls of the cafetorium with giant Peanuts characters from the play like Snoopy, Charlie Brown, and Lucy. The whole production took about two months, with a few weeks’ worth of shows to follow.
I didn’t know Jaclynn liked me until her friend ambushed me at the bus stop a few days before the play opened. I was flabbergasted because Jaclynn was older, more mature, and more popular than me. We began dating as the play opened. Together, we served as greeters for the production. She wore a short black dress, and I wore a rented tuxedo. The whole school watched the show, and everyone in it had to walk past me (and my girl) in a single-file line to get in. I felt invincible. It was the first time that being an artist had opened the door to something bigger than art: women and prestige. My ego immediately got the best of me. After finding out through the grapevine that Jennifer Dunn miraculously now had a crush on me, I decided I wanted to date her instead. I dumped Jaclynn and asked Jennifer out. At lunch the same day, she broke up with me because the whole thing felt weird to her. Poof! I myself was dumped and in shock, realizing the price of knowing what love feels like is also knowing the pain of heartbreak.
Around the age of 13, I got arrested for the second time. Rob, myself, and some other friends and I had begun sneaking out of the house at night to meet up and hang out between 11 PM and 3 AM. One night, I brought spray paint. What I thought was a profound political statement against elitist gated communities was, legally, just sloppy juvenile vandalism of the entrance to the Spruce Creek Estates. To say my mother was not pleased was an understatement. Rob and I were not allowed to hang out anymore, and I tried to stop getting arrested after that.
When I transitioned to Father Lopez High School, being an artist and getting girls did not play out in the way I imagined. I didn't get as significant a growth spurt as some of my friends, and the competition for girls got way more intense. I'd helped with the homecoming floats, but knew I was no artistic savant, so I committed to at least being a prolific one. I would try to make as many pieces as my teachers would let me, even spending time in the art room after school. If we had a weeklong assignment, I would complete the assignment the first day, then use all the free art supplies to make new creations the rest of the week.
Coming out of high school, a couple of things were certain. First, I was not going to be a professional athlete. Second, I'd had zero girlfriends since middle school, and I was still a virgin, so something wasn’t working. Instead of mixing it up and going to the gym, I decided to double down on sarcasm and art as I got ready for college.