I spent a lot of time, at my grandpa's workplace. It used to be the garage in my grandparents' house, but he turned it into a room, he got rid of the doors and stuff, so it was just like this huge room. He always had paintings he was working on, or antiques that he was bringing in and out of the house, and, he always had new things to show me. And he was always, he's always building thing, like contraptions outside, he built this huge a seesaw, like a playground toy, he made a giant one of those, or, he bought a military parachute, and strapped us to it and held us up in the air as the parachute would go. Yeah, yeah, he's definitely eccentric guy but really fun, really inventive and kind of has this childlike wonder and excitement about things. He has, or had a barn that was full of stuff like motorcycles and, old airplane propellers. And he made a lot of artwork out of airplane propellers and oars, for rowboats and canoes. So he was painting on those for a long time. He worked with, kind of outsider art.

I would compare them to Andrew Wyeth paintings, a lot of them are kind of these surreal landscape paintings. I've seen some charcoal portraits that he did and most of the paintings are like these landscape paintings that are a little bit surreal, with like old broken down homes on a hill and there're, some animals in them and they're really beautifully done, like a little bit, haunting in a way. I would say, with my grandpa, especially, very curious about the world, very outgoing, will talk to anybody, yeah, he has a lot of information about all sorts of things, like how things are made, like an encyclopedia almost, so I think a lot of that curiosity.

My curiosity came from him, from a young age and just being around him and listen to his stories. I think everyone in my family is kind of like that in a way, but him the most. He did all sorts of things. And we make all sorts of things together, we make model airplanes and he would just make things out of whatever he had lying around, we paint a lot. And yeah, I feel lucky for that. He really taught me how, how to, to think, in a process.

My whole life, I've always had a camera, and I've always been interested in, in photography. I think it was in middle school, because that's when I started, I would go to, like, I had friends that would have these parties, and it was with these kids that, I wasn't necessarily friends with. They were in this more popular group. But I would kind of photograph them and they wanted to be photographed. That's the thing about teenagers. I don't have any of these pictures anymore, unfortunately, it was kind of in middle school. The cool people were like these kids that were skateboarding. It was just always like, whoever was doing something, I was like, "Oh, this is something I don't know anything about." So I'd always, like go hang out with the skater kids. And, my mom was always like, "Oh, they're doing drugs or smoking weed or something", but I'm not in it for that. I'm in it for the pictures. I want to photograph them. There's a video, which I wish I still had, but the skaters that I was friends with had a half pipe in their backyard that they built. And I always thought that was the craziest thing. And I was like, I can't believe they have this in their backyard. And they had this cute little house in the early 1900s. Around the whole neighborhood was these old homes and half pipe in the backyard and they're kind of on the water. It was this pretty little area. And, there's this kid named Ben, he kind of hung around, like he, he wasn't as good of a skateboarder as everybody else. You could say he was a little different from everybody, the other crew. And, there's a video of him going up the ramp and face planting. And I just caught it. It was like a 3 second video. And he was fine. It probably would be like a meme now, a GIF or something. This is like, in 2009, so, it's so long ago, but I remember that video, I uploaded it to Facebook and everybody saw it and shared it and it became this iconic video of him. None of the pictures I took were good, but that video I'll never forget, cause, we all still like to talk about it to this day.

I think, photography as like part of it being meant memory, like nostalgia, and just having proof of something. And then like also photography being beautiful unintentionally, like vernacular photography. To me, I think beauty is something that can be simple. Yeah, I guess beauty is like these three things, elegant, simple, nostalgia. A big component to it is really serendipitous, like it's luck really. You know, things just happen or you get an idea from just walking around and seeing. Like just seeing something that makes you laugh.

It describes New York a lot. It's a good descriptor of the city. I met this guy that raised, or raises pigeons. And he was telling me about his pigeons. He has over 500 of them and they all have names. And as I was talking to him, he was holding them and he kind of looks like a pigeon. And I was like, "Oh, this is so funny." I was like, "Can I take your picture?" And he's like, "Yeah." So his expression is kind of pigeon like, but I think people with passions, that's what I love photographing, like passions and niche interests. I've always been interested in that. I always admire people that are into niche things. It can be anything. I really enjoy going to things that are not in my realm of knowledge and just learning. I can use photography as a tool to learn about the world. I really enjoy doing that.

I could be a little bit more costumey. I made a lot of clothes and I was not as uncomfortable wearing polyester clothing from 70s stuff. Being able to experiment is really important and figure something out that works for you and you know, kind of independent of trends. It was for me. For me, it was almost like testing out what it would have been to be walking around in the 70s or the 50s, or, any of these decades. It was kind of, you know, making an outfit that was just from one decade. I thought, it was really fun, it's special, that this stuff is still around and it's not just in pictures, you can touch it, you can wear it. It's it's cool. The nostalgia factor is really fun, and that's what it was for me, for sure. Being able to pull it off, get away with it in a way, was cool to me.