In the beginning my surroundings were filled with block parties, break dancing battles and a passion for creating art. My true inspiration came from my older brother Alberto whom we used to call 'Bertito' - short for little Berto (He passed away back in 1989 RIP). My brother was blessed with an amazing talent for drawing and I would watch him for hours in a day. So I followed in my older brother's footsteps creating my own sketches and began cultivating my style. All of this was happening at the tender age of 8. In middle school I took what I learned from my big brother and transitioned it to painting with acrylics. Around this time is when I began applying my painting abilities on jean pants and jean jackets. I made them for myself and close friends. Soon after I began recieving requests to create art on jeans & jackets for others and it grew from there. With the positive feedback I received from others my confidence began to grow where the experience lead me to trying new painting technics as spray painting. My outside influences at this point came from movies such as WildStyle 1983© and Beat Street 1985©.
With business partner and long time friend Kevin Bowler, we embarked on a memorable project from an idea of constructing a free standing double sided mural at Ryan Park in South Norwalk. Through a span of several years we gathered strong community support, financial backing and prepared a proposal to present to the board members of the City of Norwalk. When we presented our idea the board members asked questions from safety to maintanence items. After our responses the board members agreed and awarded us approval for our project. After two years process of gathering resources The Ryan Park Mural was completed. With strong community support we were able to attract a large group of young people at the SoNo Arts Festival in Norwalk to assist in painting the large mural panels. This was a great achievement for Kevin & I and to this day, the Ryan Park Mural still stands. This project was followed up by several others throughtout the city. Art Under The Bridge was a project which myself & Kevin were involved in where city officials comissioned me and several other local artists to paint 4 panels (like canvases) for each artist to paint under the i95 bridge at Heritage Park.
From 2000 thru 2010 I was fortunate to have the opportunity to do work for the NY Knicks. I have a friend in Shirley Short which had me submit drawings for a possible job to create painted jean overalls for their Knicks City Kids group. The drawings were approved and I created 18 hand painted designs for their kids dancing crew which performed during timeouts and halftime breaks at Knicks games. My work was well recieved by their front office and the kids dance crew loved them. They loved the work so much that their front office ordered several kids painted chairs as well. These chairs were todler sized and were all custom painted on solid wood. The chairs went on to be displayed at MSG in their main retail store. After several months I began recieving requests for custom painted adult sized wood chairs of various themes. These themed chairs ranged from professional sports teams to birthdays to just about everything else. I had transitioned from painting on clothing to wall murals to now painting on furniture and it was a truly great experience. I have always strived to broaden my horizons when it came to creating something with my art.
2010 to the present has been another transitioning period for me. First I was comissioned to paint a mural at Vertrue, Inc. in a meeting room. On the concept I originally took feedback from employees that were going to be using the room. They came up with several concepts and I chose one I thought to be the best. Since the meeting room was going to be used as a 'brain storming' room the best idea was the 'think tank' given by Noah Rodriguez. The mural was painted in mixed media using spray paint, acrylic paints and plastic tubing to create a 3D effect. I painted the mural on a 9' exposed pillar of the building. During this time I started working in a web based company in their creative department. Here is where I learned to create online banners and landing pages. From this experience is where I learned to create web based content using applications such as Dreamweaver, Illustrator, and Photoshop. The site you are viewing was designed by me and coded by an amazing developer, Paul La Valle. Now that I have entered the online arena my goal is to produce quality web content and help others to establish their identity through my style of web design.
