Tag: 2004

I & Eye

Charcoal on paper. 21″ x 15.5″. 2004.

I drew this during a summer semester at SCAD in Savannah.

Rastafari say “I and I” where the rest of us would say “we” or “us”. The belief underneath it is that there is no separate speaker and listener, only the same self showing up twice. It runs parallel to In Lak’ech Ala K’in, a Mayan phrase usually given in English as “I am another you.” Two different traditions, the same idea: oneness, and the sense that the person across from you is not really across from you.

I was discovering that philosophy around the time I made this, so I named it accordingly.

Drawn in 2004, photographed for archival in 2026, and shared here for the first time.

Am I Someone?

I pulled this out of an old portfolio recently. I had no memory of making it; no idea when, what I was thinking, or why it didn’t have a name. It had been sitting in there untouched for over twenty years.

In the summer of 2004 I was at SCAD (Savannah College of Art and Design) for a summer art program, on an architecture track. I was in a buddy’s dorm room. He’d brought an acoustic guitar. I had just learned “Is There Anybody Out There?” by Pink Floyd, which is a quiet, classical-sounding piece, and when I played it that day it hit me: I wanted to pursue music instead. Not because I didn’t love making art, I do, but because of the way music made me feel. That was the moment.

I went to Berklee after high school. The visual art kept happening in the background, the way it does when something’s yours but not yet public.

Looking at this piece now, it reads like that period. A lot of elements that don’t quite cohere, things pulled in different directions, patched together, not yet resolved. That’s an accurate picture of being seventeen. I titled it “Am I Someone?” because that’s the question I see in it.

Chalk pastel on paper. 2004.