Growing up as an athlete, how has the discipline and commitment from sports translated into your artistic practice, and in what ways do you see parallels between the two fields?

I think athletes who are compelled to make art have great potential to become incredible artists. I played football from the time I was 8 years old until I was 22. There are lots of life lessons baked into the ideology and play of the game. I think the principle of commitment to practice is a major key and has a strong parallel in sports and art. The commitment to practice not only improves your skill, but it aids in your preparation for the task at hand. This is a principle that is challenging because you made a commitment. Not only to the sport or art, but to the practice of that said sport or art. I also believe the principle of finishing has a strong parallel. When you're able to finish you can learn from your experience and that learning is what informs what needs to be corrected or considering in your entire approach.

As an educator working with adult artists with autism, how has teaching influenced your own artistic growth, and what have you learned from your students that has impacted your work?

So, when I was young I had trouble learning multiplication. There was something about it that did not compute for me when learning it in school. It was so bad it was getting in the way of my progress so I went to a tutor. This tutor literally made up a method for me to learn multiplication. Instead of relying on rote memorization, she created an out of the box way to get me to each answer. In her method every number represented a symbol that resembled it, like the number eight represented a snowman and the number four was represented by a four leaf clover. These multiplication problems created wacky sentences with the symbols and gave me the answer to each multiplication combination up to twelve multiplied by twelve. I was lead to work with artists with disabilities because of this experience and I came to learn it's all about the way you deliver the information that makes it retainable for each person. Teaching in this capacity is not easy at all. The artists that I serve have shown me that if you really want to learn, you will. Also, a lot of these individuals are judged based on how they look and communicate out of context. They have taught me to show up as I am be who I am and do me because people will always make judgements of you in the context that they believe is fitting for you.