Throughout my creative career there’s always been a synergy between the visual work that I make and music. I’ve noticed that I consider my process similar to a hip hop producer or composer in general. Sourcing or creating imagery to be used for collage is in the vein of sampling an break beat. The thing they have in common is that they are a deliberate breaking down in order to reconstruct. Visual reconstruction is my jam. Every story has multiple perspectives and I feel like the medium of collage and deconstructing and reconstructing is the most immediate recognition that the author is giving you a perspective, it is in itself a medium that recognizes that there are various views, layers and ways to tell a story. I’m always dealing with pieces of imagery and putting them together. That seems to be the one common thread and everything that I do.

The energy of process seems to attract musicians. I’ve had the opportunity of my career to work with amazing musicians in all walks of life. This latest projects is really close to my heart. Machel Montano is pretty much the king of current-day soca and creative cover art for Soca Universe’s Vol 1 compilation is huge. Soca music and Calypso was an integral part of my upbringing. My mom’s side is from Belize, Central America and soca is King. Growing up in southern California it was very much so marginal music, but the sounds blaring from my grandmother’s house and every family gathering told a completely different story. I often crack jokes and call soca the techno or House of Caribbean music as it requires some serious stamina.

Oftentimes the iconography of our culture is created by an external entity. This project gave me the opportunity to be in the front of center of creating and example or option or celebration and how we see ourselves. I shot the image used at Trinidad’s carnival a few years back and when Machel’s camp approached me to do this project I was elated to do something that felt so close to home and pull some of the archival footage from that journey.