While organizing old materials recently, I came across a stack of sketches from the late 1990s and early 2000s. Most of them were drawn during high school and the years just after, when drawing was a daily habit and a way to process ideas, music, and the world around me.
Looking through them now, I’m struck by how many of the instincts that shape my work today were already present. Repetition, layered forms, bold line work, and an interest in structure all show up in these early drawings. At the time, they were simply experiments — ways of filling pages, responding to hip-hop culture, graffiti, and the visual language of the streets and neighborhoods around me.
What feels especially meaningful now is the reminder that creative paths often start long before we recognize them as such. These sketches weren’t made with exhibitions or projects in mind. They were just part of a natural impulse to make something, to respond to the world visually.
Seeing them again decades later feels like reconnecting with an earlier version of myself — one that was curious, restless, and always drawing.
Some of the lines feel familiar.
