The work I create strives to find an overlap between skateboarding, DJing, filmmaking and dancing. The initial relationship I discovered was between skateboarding and filmmaking. From a young age, creating skate videos, I first honed my filmmaking skills through planned camera zooms, and light exposure, perfectly capturing the landed trick. Recently, I began to ask myself,  what if I reversed the relationship? How could a skateboard be used to benefit my filmmaking process? Whenever I explored the Chicago streets on my skateboard, I tended to stare up at the skyscrapers, in awe of their architectural beauty. As I would do this, I observed a parallax style effect occur that really caught my eye. I decided to follow through with this inspiration and developed a video series titled: Love Letters to the Loop, in which I would skate down the streets of Chicago, spontaneously filming interesting visuals that appeared in front of me. The fast movement from gliding on four wheels in combination with my smooth gimbal pans achieved a specially intriguing visual effect. 

My newfound interest with the artform of dance music mixing has also intersected with my passion for filmmaking. I created a visual identity system for my DJ alias, Digital Arts & Crafts. I chose to take up an 8-bit aesthetic inspired by MS-Paint and also developed an identifiable wardrobe consisting of motorcycle goggles and a balaclava. The sets I create in my studio are filmed in front of a green screen which enables me to implement a variety of dynamic motion graphics as well as distorted effects to my body. When I film my live sets at DIY venues around Chicago, I use my concert photography knowledge to set up strategic angles and lenses in order to capture the incredible energy of the event. 

I’ve been dancing all my life, primarily with Destiny Arts Youth Performance Company, a Hip-Hop dance troupe based in Oakland, CA, with whom I went on to edit performances and dance videos under the mentorship of videographer, Yoram Savion, owner of YakFilms. With my seven plus years of semi-professional hip-hop performance, I gained the expertise in this form of movement, giving me first-hand insight which I used in the editing process. My most recent work is a synthesis of all my areas of interest: a video of a Payton, a DePaul student dancing to a unique house song in an underground parking garage, in which I use my skateboard and camera to record the electric dance moves.