There is one thing we all have in common: we don’t choose where we are raised. We all come into this world at random locations around the planet. The life predetermined for us within this global hierarchal structure is really just a luck of the draw. Before my plethora of mental health struggles, before living on the road climbing and painting murals, before even the dawn of the internet, I happened to find myself born and existing in a small northern suburb of Detroit, MI.
I consider myself to be on the more fortunate side with how my particular life began. I was born as a white cisgendered male, and raised in a safe and wealthy community mostly prospering by the automotive industry. I had an incredibly tight-knit family with loving parents and a wonderful sibling. Life was happy and easy, with really nothing to fear. It wasn’t until much later that I even recognized my privileges and have begun to reshape my worldview and responsibilities.
Activities like street hockey, drawing, swimming and exploring the local woods filled my time outside of school. I enjoyed sports, mostly focusing on baseball and hockey in my younger years. Athletics came naturally to me, and would often excel in them, however my interests in traditional sports dwindled over time to be replaced by rock climbing and snowboarding in my young adult years.
Most of my core activities and belief structures were formed in my high school years when I was exposed to books such as Howard Zinn’s "A Peoples History of the United States" and Derrick Jensen’s "A Culture of Make Believe." As a seventeen-year-old kid, reading essays exploring the atrocities of colonialism throughout history, and uncovering how horrifically violent and exploitative western civilization really was, had life changing effects on me. The knowledge fueled me; it called me closer to the natural world and gave me a better reason to create art beyond my natural predisposition and talent.
Naturally, I went to art college after high school. It was here I read Jack D. Forbes book, "Columbus and Other Cannibals", introducing me to the word “Wetiko”. According to Native Americans, Wetiko is an evil spirit that invades human minds. It’s a “virus” of selfishness making us feed off the souls of others in order to prosper and survive. A pathogen, similar to how a rabid animal would do things unnatural, forcing the victim to feed their insatiable needs as if they were starving with no care for those impacted. As far as I know, many tribes had different names for this disease, but it was the Cree in Canada that used the term Wetiko for the first time.
This idea comforted the screaming child in me who consistently cried out asking why our culture was so destructive. Certainly, we aren’t all consciously vicious individuals? The word, Wetiko, the philosophy, the comfort of it, the abstracted beauty, it was all consuming. I started writing it everywhere. I wanted everybody to know about it.
It was 2004, before the glorious “come back” of Detroit. Pre- gentrification, it was still, quiet. Due to the deindustrialization of Detroit and the “white flight,” the city lost over 60% of its 1950’s population, predominately abandoning the people of color to the decrepit city for the “safer” suburbs. It was empty, abandoned. It was a canvas. Some of the best graffiti writers from all over the world started traveling to Detroit to paint. My creativity which had been exclusively in studio at this time started to bleed out into the streets and I picked up spray paint as a new medium to experiment with. Not knowing it would evolve into any type of career at all, I started painting the streets, signing everything as Wetiko. It was my tribute to all the once living beings (human and nonhuman) affected by the rise and fall of this industrial city. To me the word Wetiko encompassed everything. It became my moniker, an acknowledgement of the monster all around us.
I painted all day and all night for three semesters until the decision to drop out came upon me and liberated me. Not only was I motivated to drop out of college, but I was ready to drop out of the race. The pyramid climb. The Panopticon. I’ve traveled and lived all over the country ever since, always returning to Detroit for family and familiarity, a secure base. First to Tucson, then the coast of California, then the Colorado Rockies, and then Appalachians in Asheville. Here I slowed down at first a bit, then a lot. It was here that I got held up, physically and emotionally. I settled down hoping for stability and instead endured two of the most traumatic experiences of my life. I had lived a charmed life before this, and was a bright, optimistic, adventurous soul who laughed and played often. After Asheville, I was broken. I felt lost and betrayed, and the only place I found refuge was nature.
Just like Detroit was always my home base, the Red River Gorge in Kentucky was where my soul truly came to rest. It was there for me to escape the pressures of this modern world. A space to decompress, breathe deep, and explore. If I wished to be alone, there were endless trails and low key crags, if I needed human support, there were always like minded folk hanging out at Miguel’s Pizza, the climber sanctuary of the Red.
After all the Asheville traumas, I developed agoraphobia and dealt with severe panic attacks. Uncontrollably, I quickly became a hermit, locked away in my home. I’d work, return home, then repeat. Agoraphobia is an unbearable anxiety response about being away from a safe space, and overwhelmed by being in public. The safe space most commonly is the individual’s home. If I ever found myself in a situation where there wasn’t a quick exit to be truly alone, I had internal and constant loud alarm bells going off, dealing with shortness of breath, dizziness, racing heart and stomachaches.
I’ve lived with this ever since, for the last 15 years in a near constant state of panic. I have tried fighting it with more travel, because ultimately it was being out in nature that seemed to cure me. I hitchhiked around the Appalachians, then flew to Denver to hitchhike around the Rockies. Hiking around and climbing in
nature, gave me a sense of safety, control. I always felt like I was truly alone out in the woods. This outer peace that allowed me to tap into my inner calm.
Unfortunately, continuing to exist demands money, and in order to make it I always gravitated towards creative work. I was a tattoo artist for some time, a cabinet maker, a photographer and a videographer. Any way I could express myself and create brought me happiness. During this time I got married, then years later divorced. I met many other loves throughout this time, still moving around to different towns, under different roofs to hide in with my anxiety. The problem with this routine is I wasn’t really able to get out much aside from working then rushing home to seek comfort.
In 2017, my partner at the time and I decided to take a leap and build out a tiny home in a short school bus. Creating the business name Fresh Air Creatives, we would hit the open road to seek opportunity and experience this sense of outer peace. It was an attempt to cure our anxieties through adventure and content creation. Once we had the bus built out, and we were ready to hit the open road, mural work started coming my way.
For a year we traveled, exploring towns and parks along the way, creating videos of our laughs and cries, all while painting murals. It was a true expression of myself and felt so natural and honest. It was a liberating experience, and I still return to watch those videos just to get a sense of how happy I actually was.
When my partner and I split, I felt that same emptiness and longing like I had so many times before, and the only place I knew to go was the Red River Gorge. The Red embraced me with arms open. I must be honest, even though I had been climbing on and off for maybe 15 years at this point, I was not in any shape to hold my own at the Red. Climbing is a passion of mine, but had never been one that I would push myself at too hard. I enjoyed the culture, and the experience of being in nature. I’d often just go to the crag with a couple beers and just watch people climb. I’d scramble around, crack jokes, and offer a catch for other climbers.
I’d follow people around with my camera documenting their individual interactions with nature. Exposed rock, whether hidden behind trees, or exposed in the deserts which can be seen miles away, has always been my favorite backdrop for photography. Landscape photography never really inspired me, but my love for portraiture and shooting humans interacting with nature brought me so much joy.
It was a joke around the Red that you’d just come across me, sitting in my harness, camera ready, 70 feet above the ground on a static line smoking a cigarette waiting for much harder climbers send. I was once in line for pizza at Miguel’s and this young woman who I recognized from the crag looked at me and asked, “did you even climb today?” and we laughed about that a long time after. I was there for almost the entire month of October, and maybe climbed a dozen routes total. I did however, create some of the greatest memories of my life, and captured the real climbing stars send 13’s.
Murals pushed me from the Red to the western states, balancing climbing and painting. I painted a mural in Seattle, then climbed in Vegas for a month, then back up to Anacortes for another mural, then climbed in Vantage. The story continues on in this rhythm. Taking the philosophies of Wetiko and transforming the theory, the inspiration, the practice into the physical paintings has fueled my creativity. Often my work shows a collage of animals, humans, plant life all in harmony within the art. On occasion, I will clash heavy machinery, or more destructive elements of western civilization tied to natural elements. The story is often the same.
My favorite aspect of creating public art in this fashion, is I enjoy hearing viewers responses to the collage of subjects I choose. I create my own Wetiko inspired narrative in my head, and enjoy hearing a totally different story come out of each individual. Outdoor murals, with the open air surrounding it, has always been so much more appealing than the gallery setting. However, knowing how important “home” is to me with my anxiety’s, knowing that my work hangs in people’s safe places comforts me.
I currently reside in Portland, Oregon. I have found a beautiful partner to spend my time with. Together we share many of the same outlets including both art and nature. Unfortunately, our one big climbing trip to Smith Rock we both were too weak to climb much due to this illness that seemed to be sweeping the planet. With my previous years focusing on escaping to cure my mental health, my new partner has helped me focus more on internal work. With her help, I have learned more about myself this past year than I even thought possible.
I will continue on, painting, climbing, exploring, trying my very best to push through the anxiety and panic. It has already taken so many opportunities from me. However I am grateful for those times I was able to push through the discomfort towards the blissful other side. It has helped me truly value all my experiences, the beautiful people I have met along the way, and the opportunity to do what I truly love as my job.
I picture that 19-year-old in art school looking out the window wondering what lay ahead. I smile, and am very proud to show him all that he accomplishes. “There will be a cost, but you will gain much reward.”
For more murals check out:
