By: Yancarlo Reinoso

Introduction

My name is Yancarlo Reinoso, 31 a Miami, Florida-born native; I’m a First Generation American of Cuban and Dominican descent and a self-taught as well as self-proclaimed Appalachian Starving Artist. I moved into the Middle Appalachian’s in Smyth County, to a small town named Marion, Virginia when I was 15 going on 16. Not going to beat around the bush— but at first, I hated my mother for the move. She is a strong woman, having went through the aftermath of Fulgencio Batista’s rule of the island of Cuba, and the rise of Communism to replace his rule. She also endured the aftereffects of the Red Scare on Southern Florida by the time she arrived as a child in 1959. My mother also went through an actual dose of Communism among her developmental years of 5-9 years old, so she not only curses like a sailor, but she has a very cutthroat version of what ‘humor’ truly is; therefore I apologize if my jokes or references cause your skin to cringe.
As she would say, ‘it’s just that we Cubans speak so passionately that when translated to English, forget it’; a milkshake can taste so exquisite that you quite literally ‘die dreaming’. You’re reading this I’m sure and wondering what a milkshake might do to kill you, but it’s not the ingredients carrying a morbid dose of poison but rather how we use Latin to derive the English language from it. Then attempt to translate it for friends, family, and colleagues alike. Morir Sonando — translates truly to the action of one ‘dying whilst dreaming’. The Milkshake itself is wonderful! It’s what we know as an Orange Julius. My life has been an interesting one to say the least, although my mother came here for freedom from oppression by the People’s Republic of Cuba; my late father came here seeking opportunity. Being from a country where rolling blackouts and running water go hand in hand with island spirituals and candle-light vigils on the mountains of Hispaniola.
Hispaniola is the beautiful island that, contrary to the United States persistence in wrongfully teaching American students the false historical claim of Christopher Columbus’ sail across the ocean blue to :find America: ; he actually found the now split island that consists of Haiti& Dominican Republic. My father was a descendant of the true natives of the Caribbean islands— the Taino people. The Taino were indigenous to the Caribbean and as a result of their first European contact— smallpox infected and took out a great portion of the Arawak and Taino people in the island regions of the Caribbean’s. As history went on, Santo Domingo; the nation of the Dominican Republic’s capital, became the first European settlement in the Americas and thus the islanders remained speaking Spanish.
This caused a racial divide on the island that has fueled internal racism among both the Haitians toward the Dominicans and vice versa, which has resulted in a law that if the person is dark completed and unable to pronounce the double r sound for the Spanish word . When the person cannot pronounce the word; they’re immediately deported to Haiti— violently beaten before being flung over their border wall. My father, being a darker man, you can assume went through this all of his life until he came to America— in America he was simply black. He used to get so giddy about the fact that he raised an American son who didn’t have to work in the sun like he did being a plasterer and roofer in South Florida because ‘I broke the mold’. I was the first man in my family to work in an air-conditioned office inside a call center and with that sense of relief my father, Juan Jose Reinoso-Brito, died via FaceTime from his sister’s home in Paterson, New Jersey on May 7th, 2021 from stage 4 metastatic cancer at 57 years old.

My grandfather and every ancestor before him worked the land to fill the colonists orders for corn, grain, sugar etc. They were all farmers until my dad, my step-grandfather and mentor Oscar taught him his trade of plaster and roofing when he immigrated to the US at 27 years old when he married my mother in 1990. Oscar was a hard-working man, and one of the things he saw in my father who gave him hope in his ability to work on his job sites was the same type of work ethic. Grandpa Oscar often told me that was the drive that he was raised with, Grandpa Oscar being from similar background.

Oscar Rodriguez was a Cuban POW Veteran and met my mother at 11 after the Bay of Pigs Invasion when he was released with my Grandmother’s brother Angel, they were POW’s. Oscar had fallen head over heels in love with my grandmother, Martha. Martha and he raised all of us, frankly, in one way or another.

South Florida is a tough region to endure. But that didn’t stop Oscar, against all odds, “Rambo” as he was referred to regularly, protected us from anything and was the superglue that held us all together. Regardless of the name of the storm, no one could stop Rambo or “MacGyver” as he was also called; from repairing the house. Together, they raised my mother Mayra, my aunts: Maylen and Mayte and my brother Alex, when my mother was unable to due to her history of drug addiction. In fact, drug addiction, unfortunately, is a lot of what has plagued my family for many decades.

Reagan’s America is seen as a time of glory, but the facts of the War on Drugs and what history now reflects back is that;

Cocaine is a hell of a drug.

(Rick James)

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Influenced by Deco Drive, Calle Ocho and Miami Beach culture

To be quite bluntly honest, though, if it had not been for mother’s addiction to crack-cocaine, I wouldn’t exist. The events that lead out of the 80s into the 90s resulted in my mother going to get sober in the Dominican Republic and thus meeting my father. My mother gave birth to her second child at 39 years old on June 4th, 1990. But she raised me while living with her parents Oscar and Martha; while her two younger sisters and eldest son Alex, being 17, finished high school and started off to college. My aunt Mayte I believe to have been among the start of my influence toward art & creativity in general, being the crafty one of immediate family. I can remember growing up over using glitter from time to time. Mrs. Green, my Kindergarten teacher, noticed that coloring was something I enjoyed so much that she began to print me off extra coloring sheets to take home from school to work on because I was bored often and effortlessly distracted.

One day in class, I believe I was in the 4th grade, I ran across a great painting in a Harcourt Mills textbook. Within was a psychedelic piece that made me obsessed with psychedelia, from that point forward I loved tye dye and anything trippy with numerous colors. The painting is by an artist I met later in life, when I worked for Handsome Molly’s Small Wine Shoppe & Bistro right out of High School in Marion, Va; Jack Taylor or JARATA as he pens his name on his pieces. Mr. Taylor moved to Smyth County back in 05 when Hurricane Katrina decimated his home. We’ve remained friends and speak from time to time, mainly to pick his brain for tips, pointers, or questions that have come up throughout the years. It was actually he who inspired me to move onto do more picturesque type scene or recreating portraits of people and animals.

My childhood left me with nothing I could ever want because I had EVERYTHING I ever wanted or needed growing up. I graduated from playing Super Nintendo to Sega Genesis to Sony PlayStation quite often. We weren’t rich, but I never knew we were doing without because my grandfather Oscar, like I said, raised all of us one way or another. Miami is where my true heritage and influence in art culture was nurtured, from diapers to boxers. I know better now, at the time you can tell this was starting to create a spoiled child because I began to be very bratty and full of myself.

Growing up in South Florida is unmeasurable to me as a main aggregator of inspiration because everywhere I would turn an eye to it is a technicolor paradise sea of pastels and metallic rainbow hues. Pearlescent dreamland of music on brass, orchestral strings, maracas, castanets the sounds new with every ring and almost a different country of its own. Full of life, vibrant, loud, beautiful, colorful, love, happiness, pride in your roots as an immigrant. Regardless whether from Puerto Rico, Cuba, Colombia, DR or any of the South American or Central American soil, indescribable to me in any other way than the real life version of a melting pot of EVERY culture portrayed in the pop culture classic from Disney World’s “It’s a Small World” ride.

Disney World, of course, being one of a dozen dreams of mine I still have to date if I had the education or opportunity to pursue, I obviously enjoy the amusement park rides. Being a Florida resident of immigrant roots, it’s almost seen as a rite of passage to go at least once in a lifetime, my grandparents took us every year, it was a mandatory attendee event. But rather to work to create more rides, attractions, animatronics; guaranteed I was probably the only 10-year-old that wanted to go to Epcot for the ‘world travel’ experience. Animal Kingdom rocked my socks off, from the jump when you see the magnificent tree at the entrance, carved in the most beautiful displays of jungle fauna and snakes gazelles — breathtaking and life changing for me. I was the kid everyone in my family used as their ‘Trial Run’ child because my mother wasn’t necessarily incapable of raising me, she was just getting older—

1. my mother had me at 39, and she was mid-40’s early 50’s
2. Irresponsible
3. Overweight, starting to have thyroid cancer and worsening with odds of getting better lessening
4. Still an undiagnosed Bi-Polar woman, unmedicated and self-medicating with various illegal substances
5. Low self-esteem and depression due to;
6. My estranged drug-addled and alcoholic father, to which she on again off relationship, although their divorce when I was 5.

I remember ping ponging a lot while growing up with my cousins Natasha when I was with Maylen her mother or Little Renier, Alexandra and Jacqueline who were my grandmother Martha’s brother Angel’s son Renier’s children. Renier Sr. I always saw more as an Uncle than a cousin or second cousin or whatever. Especially seeing as how my father married his sister Rayma, so he really ended up my uncle in the end anyway. I remember that at one point I even went to the Dominican Republic and lived for a year in 1998 with my mother, my brother grandmother Martha and Grandfather Oscar. As I tell my friends in Virginia, Hispanic families are different because we don’t call CPS, we take the children in as our own before we ever let the system take them from us. Families are supposed to stick together NO MATTER WHAT.

Immersed in these cultures, I’ve wanted nothing more since then to leave an immortalized footprint along this earth. I want to let others know not just what struggles I have gone through in my life, but what my family struggled through together to have the opportunities we did have. How we worked hard for what we’ve achieved to reflect on this with them now and help them as did we, grow to share with our very own children as will they, and grandchildren.

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Influenced by politics and forces out of mine or family’s control

Now, I had just made it into Middle School and I distinctly remember 2 major political events. These began to shape my understanding of American Democracy and fuel what will become my form of political activism that forms the majority of my art pieces:

1. The way that the US Government abducted Elian Gonzalez from his family’s home and the media burned this image in my brain: I had never seen anything like this. To think that this was possible being of Cuban descent, watching a child a few years younger than me be deported. Basically stripped of asylum because his mother was not alive to overturn the decision to hand him back over to his father, did not and still does not sit right in my eyes.
2. Donald Rumsfeld telling us that 2.3T went missing from the Defense budget less than 24h before:
3. 9/11/2001

Because of these events, not only was my fragile child mind forever altered, so were the circumstances of my upbringing. Being a child of immigrants fearing the war effort, I assume, as well as how much of a spoiled brat I was becoming. My parents tried to once more reconcile their differences and had the bright idea to build a home with my grandfather Oscar’s help in Conuco, Salcedo’s farming district in the Dominican Republic. Right after 9/11 I moved back to Dominican Republic, only this time it was like I metaphorically was transported to the year 1941 and was signed up in uniformed Catholic school. By dwindling GPA due to my misunderstanding of accents in writing Spanish on paper. My grandfather noticed this and my parents could not reconcile their differences after all, and I was moved back to the US after 1 year in the Dominican Republic.

When I returned in 2003 my eyes filled with a different view of not only the world but our government. The USA PATRIOT Acthad already started to change the US as a whole. Which meant for me in particular, I was not allowed to enter the US nor leave the Dominican Republic, without my mother. Therefore, I had to wait for my mother to come back to get me. A few months later, when I did get to go past Customs with my mother, being searched at the Airport was weird to say the least.

Now, I’d been through customs before, but my mother even stated going through Customs and Security that it reminded her of when she first got to the airport the day she left Cuba in 1959. The following school year was the first time I went to the Miami Downtown Museum of Art at 13, and it changed my life. I still remember when I told my grandpa about these great big paintings that were in black & red floor to ceiling and how beautiful they were; I guess was so happy to see me legitimately still having interest in drawing and painting that he let me at this point start doing my walls in my bedroom. I was so happy, like Christmas in July.

My anxiety of politics, my parents, and my mother’s addiction to Somas and Xanaxes led me to start experimenting with marijuana. My father was perfect for me, in my eyes, but he was an alcoholic as well as a wife beater and my mother; throughout all my life, has either been on prescription drugs from a doctor or illegal drugs from multiple drug dealers. With that being said, I believe we should treat the addict and not condemn them for their use but embrace those who see the problem and search for the cure. As I write this, knowing full well what both sides of the spectrum look like. Because the apple didn’t fall far from the tree, some of us do end up statistically becoming a product of the environments they were placed in.

Marijuana in my case caused me to start experimenting further and by freshman year of High School— I was using cocaine heavily. I was unaware of my mother’s actions and ramifications to later follow, but my mother and I went from occasionally smoking weed to using cocaine every day, we went through an 8-ball every 2 or 3 days.

When Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005 it was only a CAT 1 but the destruction of it and the following Hurricane Rita & Hurricane Wilma— I lost 3 months of my 10th grade year. Something I remember that, until now, still echoes in my memory is the crucial moment that I first heard a highly acclaimed mega-superstar make a claim against the government:

Kanye West

I remember watching Kanye and Mike Myers’s on national television talking about Hurricane Katrina and how the government was handling the situation. Mike Myers’s finished speaking and Kanye took the helm and stated;

George Bush doesn’t care about black people.

Kanye West

This was the moment that cemented how I felt about the government internally, ‘I’m not the only one who feels this way’.

In those 3 months, my grandparents were visiting Costa Rica and my mother had access to their bank account to pay for bills and utilities. When my grandparents came back and the money my mother had withdrawn from the bank was found out, my mother took the full blame. When given the offer to either stay in Florida to continue my studies and go to the Navy at 18 or ‘go be a f%#! Up with my mom’ I made the most Kanye-like move and chose my mom. This is what systematically changed my life forever because it was the first time I got to travel out of Florida through Georgia, South, and North Carolina — I loved it. For the first time, I was in a small town; Marion, Virginia, population less than 5000 plus no structure or real rules because life with my mom was very relaxed to say the least. To me, this equaled culture shock.

Influenced by Classic Rock, Old Hippies and the Opioid Crisis

March 2006, was the first time I saw snow falling and even though I slightly hated my mom for moving us to the middle of Nowhere, America, I felt like a kid in Christmas. The first meal I had was at what I now know is east coast Carl’s Jr.: Hardee’s. As I ate that Thickburger, my mother called the one local high school, Marion Senior High, and I was enrolled to start half block scheduling the following Monday. Now because I left a metropolitan area that was pro-Bush, the No Child Left Behind act, did me no favors. I was able to pass the FCAT every year, but academically I had little to no credits because not only had I missed 3 months of my 10th grade year. Furthermore, I missed the majority of 10th grade because I skipped school every day after homeroom.

This resulted in me having 3 classes: Geometry, Health and Algebra 1. I failed the 10th grade and instead of being brought back to the 10th grade they sent me back to the 9th grade. This caused an animosity between me and the Smyth County School Board, and the match that lit the coming fires I had yet to start at that school. The summer of 2006 was the time of my life, my next door neighbors were getting off the school bus and my mother was doing the ‘Cuban’ thing— cleaning the house while listening to salsa music. I was painting on the front porch because I had finally gone through me detox from the cocaine because cocaine was ridiculously expensive in this region, come to find out. Definitely inflated, but the reason being due to the Opioid crisis and Methamphetamine.

My soon to become best friend Kenny, his sister (now girlfriend) Kayla, Michael, and brothers Colin and Gared walked down the road. My mother was sick of me moping around the house and introduced me to them by a joke we were talking about on the trip up.

My favorite band was Pink Floyd, I loved Pink Floyd’s the Wall, the main character was called Pink and as a result of a joint we smoked together that morning she decided to tell them my nickname is Pink.

I am writing this as a 31-year-old man and telling you that at 31, I can go into a convenience store anywhere in Smyth County. I guarantee you, the owner or a patron know me as Pink the Los Man. ‘The Los Man’ comes from the hippies I’ve befriended in the area, who call me Carlos or Los man.

That summer I played numerous hippie parties because my mom was older and befriended an older crowd. I was a big music buff, so I got paid in drugs and cash to play music for a lot of these parties. I became wildly popular, I went from being a nobody in Miami, to being a popular druggie teenage anarchist punk. Furthermore, I was the talk of the town considering I got busted nightly past the curfew of 10pm in town. This caused my mother countless headaches and began to drive a wedge because I was out of control and misusing my ADHD meds. I had learned by now that if I took 2 or more of my Concerta, I could get higher than the jarring effects of cocaine. I was going to school every day but slept through every class except Art 101, English 101 and Typing class.

Remember how I said I was immersed in the Art Culture of Miami, well, the really cruddy part of living there and having a last name that started with ‘r’ is I got picked last ALWAYS. I never got to take Art as an elective, this time I was able to make the cut because there was significantly way less children attending this high school. I poured everything into these 3 classes, but being the weird brown kid came at a price. Not only that, but I wore eccentric clothing, as well as boots, a trench coat and eyeliner. Tripp Pants were an everyday fashion for me.

I was asked repeatedly by teachers, vice principal, councilors, principal, and school officials to stop wearing the trench coat to the point of them assigning me a locker for free just to place it in. When I got into arguments with the jocks which resulted in ISS In School Suspension. This kept me from my favorite classes and angered me further, I was also arguing with my father on the phone quite often, my girlfriend at the time Lakyn and I were on again off. Which caused ripples with my friendships with Colin, her ex and his brother Gared. After a heated political debate in the locker room with a local prep yuppie Trevor, landed me in ISS again, I got sick of the school. The verbal altercation was followed by a fight at the football game that night, that was broken up by a Sheriff and a Town cop. When searched, I was caught with a pocket knife, which was confiscated, and I was let off with a warning and more ISS.

October 2006, can’t remember the date exactly, but it was in the final week just days before Homecoming. I was traveling from Art 101 to Geometry and was smoking a joint of marijuana, a teacher saw me and told me to go to the office. I went to my next class, 35 minutes later they came to Mr. Karnes’ classroom and escorted me to the office. Officer Powers and the Vice Principal told me I was not to attend the homecoming dance. I think I flipped them the bird and kicked a desk in response, followed by laughter.

Either way, for me, it was a win, no ISS the next day. The Typing Class had an assignment for us to write an essay about what we would do at the homecoming dance. I did the worst thing I could’ve ever decided to do for the assignment, I wrote how I would kill everyone at the homecoming dance with every sentence being in alphabetical order as the assignment entailed. The rest of the week was a blur to be quite honest, I did a lot of day drinking in those days and forgot how it all happened, but I just stopped going to school. My girlfriend pleaded I return, but when I learned that they wanted to call me in for questioning over the essay, I just laid out more. So much so that, March 2007 was when it finally caught up with me, my mom got charged, tried, convicted and sentenced to unsupervised probation for contributing to the delinquency of multiple minors for supplying alcohol for a friend’s party.

Although not being charged for me, she did get charged of truancy for my lack of attendance at Marion Senior High School. I was charged with terroristic threats to the student body and sentenced to community service after school hours for 150 hours. I was barred from attending any schools in Smyth County, Va and forced to go through the GED program and Night School because dropping out was not an option in Virginia until the adult age of 18. The Teaching Alternative Program would not allow me to be enrolled because I was a flight risk, and I was too smart for TCAP. So, March 1, 2007, I walked into the high school again for the first time since October 2006.

Ms. Henson, was super astonished that the essay is why I was barred from the schools, and stated that the essay was the best read she had in quite a while. She asked me to sit and complete the practice tests. I passed all of them by that Wednesday. They asked me to complete my community service for the week but to take the tests the following Monday, by the following Wednesday I had graduated with my GED. In April or May 2007,(all of this is fuzzy because I was on Concerta and illegal drugs as well as drinking quite heavily) my mother; forced to leave the state of Virginia as a plea bargain, and we went back to my grandpa’s house. Which was now my brother Alex’s marital home. My grandparents had moved to Costa Rica, so my room was now painted from top to bottom, I wept.

I worked on those walls for 2 and a half years, some of what I thought at the time was my best work. My brother and his wife claimed there were demonic forces behind my artwork. This drove a wedge between us and ultimately lead to the next brash decision I made. Unbeknownst to my mother, I sold my laptop and hopped a Greyhound bus back to Smyth County to live with my high school sweetheart Lakyn, who helped me combat my drug addiction— the first time.

Sobriety, Fatherhood, and Service with a Smile

Seventeen and homeless-ish, I slept in my now ex-wife’s closet throughout the rest of her high school years. My family isolated me, mostly by my hand of not answering phone calls, but mainly because what I did was stupid.

Lakyn and I had bigger fish to fry, her mother was also a drug addict that had just relapsed and Lakyn was not an only child.

Billie Jean became my rock, watching and helping her sister raise this little girl became my everything. Lakyn and I grew closer and closer, we married in 2008. I took a job at Handsome Molly’s Small Wine Shoppe and Bistro.

I got to rub shoulders with the Art Walk community of Marion and cater to attendees from across the street at ‘Song of the Mountains’ events held at the Lincoln Theatre.

This was where I met Jack Taylor:

Now sober and a father figure not only to Billie Jean but my first son Victor in 2010, I had to really buckle down. The art stopped for a while and I took my mental health into more of an account as it began to weigh on Lakyn, who herself had just gotten diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder. I sought help and did the medication thing, and it resulted in depression but also ended in alcoholism, which crumbled my marriage by 2014. Career-wise, though, I was a CAT Agent making a good salary at the time and I worked your regular 9 to 5 and hated my existence. Everything came to a screeching halt after my grandfather passed in 2015, I again fell into addiction, only this time it was Methamphetamine. Like I said, the apple didn’t fall far from the tree.

For years, I refused to use Crystal Meth but in a time of absolute crushing depression and the want to end my life it saved me because I could still work, be a dad and I began to create again. In this time I met the second love of my life, Jenn, 33 at the time, wild and free spirited.

She was and still is a fox, but together we were explosive. Not our relationship, but our drug use. Her mother, Skyla Wilson, has also become a very great friend of mine and someone I’ve looked up to as a fellow artist herself.

We beat the demon once and have a crowning achievement to prove it: Micah Moose as we call him:

After this vacation, came the relapse that ended our relationship. I hold on to hope, but addicts don’t survive through addiction in my experience. This is what shaped me, this is my journey. Now 31, with the knowledge I have, the names I can state shape me as an artist are:

1. Disney, Walt
2. West, Kanye
3. Taylor, Jack
4. Wilson, Skyla
5. Hawking, Stephen
6. Wilson, Joe
   

Inspiration in every corner

In today’s society, I see inspiration EVERYWHERE, to be quite frank. I consider myself to be a political activist and artist, seeing the current State of the Union; I just have to turn on the TV or surf Facebook long enough, and I catch a wave of inspiration. I’m inspired by my children quite a lot as well:

I see them and how much they remind me of myself, and it not only scares me, but it gives me hope in whom they might become if given the proper environment. Music also is a big influencer to me, anything from Mozart to 2 Chains, it depends on the mood for me.

Mediums

Truthfully, I prefer the digital medium now vs the physical. Which I know is blasphemous to say the least, but I have been able to produce more works and preserve them way easier than before with a 4-year-old moose on the loose. I from time to time still enjoy pen and ink though it’s very soothing, plus with the inability to erase it makes you farther more crafty to have to turn things into others to try to hide mistakes. Permanence is tricky that way.

A letter to 14-year-old me

Dear idiot,

Although tempting, please don’t smoke weed with your mother. This is told as a warning for the events to come, however, do not change your decision to embark to Virginia with her. This is the best decision you will ever make in your life, you just don’t know it yet. Learn from my mistakes and swim with the school rather than against them. You will excel far more than you can dream if you apply yourself correctly. Do not drink so much, you’re killing your liver and lay off the acid a bit so that you can see that pizza in the oven is not breathing, and you do not need to give it mouth-to-mouth. It will burn you severely. Love your father every SINGLE DAY, he doesn’t have much time left, and you will regret all the horrible things you said about him. Make sure you call him and your mother every day, I know talking to mom is a struggle but if you never smoke with her and ruin that relationship, she has wisdom in volumes. As well as wittiness that you can pass on to your children. Try to keep a closer relationship to Alex, he doesn’t know he hurt you, and he is your brother. The only one who knows you exist, the only one you truly have. Forget Niki, no sirve. You are a Reinoso, be proud of who you are, stop hiding. Your father forgives you, don’t worry so much, he loves you, you’re his baby boy. Abuelo Oscar would have loved to see you more, so remember to visit often before it’s too late. Don’t change your drug patterns or else you lose the Moose, we can’t have that either, but try harder at your relationship which ever you end up with is on you. Both are fixable, but only one is irreplaceable, so choose wisely or lose both FOREVER. Lastly, don’t give up hope. If you lose hope, just remember you still have both of them alive at the time you read this. Seek their guidance at ANY TIME, they will answer at ANY TIME, both your Abuelo and Papi are there for you ALWAYS. You can ALWAYS count on the very best advice from either one. Smile while you still got the teeth.

Signed

Pink the Los Man

Favorite Tools

Adobe. Adobe. Adobe. Adobe. But for real Creative Cloud — all of it as well as the latest addition to my ‘toolbox’ in and of itself is Tayasui Sketches on iOS 15 for iPad. Love it. Furthermore, Creative Cloud Express is wonderful as well.

Favorite Font

To be honest, although bland, I enjoy Georgia a lot. I guess you can say— it’s on my mind (sorry, dad had to make a dad joke). Moreover, — Tuppence:

And Eric Machat Headline:

Design in the meta verse

Ok… The Metaverse is quite literally something I just started to wrap my head around whilst writing this… wow. I have no idea, but what I know is that it is going to rock the art community to the core. Imagine, you could draw up, down, left right… under yourself. 360 & 180, like Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man:

Full virtual renditions of classic portraits could be recreated like straight up being in Renaissance paintings would be wicked cool. Chills, I have chills in the thought — which brings up this little diddy I came up with:

Imagine this symbol but overlap it with a black symbol to encompass a globe within both symbols and the arrows overlapping but all points visible.

Reminds me of a Donald Rumsfeld quote, too:

Regardless, I hope you’ve enjoyed the read, but this is me. A 31-year-old, former punk anarchist turned political activist artist father, survivor of the war in America. The War on Drugs and the war on our minds.