Where do I begin to tell my story?

Perhaps, alas at the very start. I was born a 7 month premature baby in Bellview Hospital located in the Lower East side. I was the youngest of three children born to a pair of loving parents who were not rich in finance, but alas rich in spirit.

I grew up in a housing project in alphabet city,  apartment 2D at 500 E. houstin St. It was a low income building where half the time the elevator did not work, and the stairways were filled with graffiti and the smell of urine.  We grew up in poverty, my parents did the best they could with what they had. We were not born with a silver spoon in our mouths, but we were well taken care of. I remember it being a time of barely getting by, of fried spam and blocks of government cheddar cheese.

My father was a humble janitor down at 40 Worth Street and my mother a seamstress who sewed clothes for Gloria Vanderbilt. My parents had three children, two boys and one girl with I being the baby of the family.  We were raised appropiately. attended Catholic schools  likle “Our Lady of Sorrow” and “Immaculata”, and I was even an alter boy for 6 years.

Art was always a part of me since I was a child. graffiti just fill in the void I had. I recall being just a kid scribbling my alias “DreamR” on the walls and staircases of the housing projects. I recall seeing murals by Lee One on various handball courts, and visiting the old graffiti covered Ampitheatre in East River Drive park.

Alphabet city was a place composed of low income housing projects, stores and derelict abandoned and crumbling buildings. Where slum lords would torch thier properties or leave them to rot, decay and fall apart rather than fixed them. What looked like a war zone to many, was a playground to us as that was all we knew.

It was a time when heroin and drugs were rampant in the streets and HIV was wiping out many. I recall losing two cousins to the downfalls of heroin, and losing others to the spread of aids. But as kids we were blinded to that, we cared about our Saturday morning cartoons, playing  in the waters of nearby fire hydrant and hanging out at parks and handball courts.  I had a shielded life until I hit middle school and then I spread my wings and set myself free.

645 Water Street

Sometime in the late 70s, my parents one day decided to move away from Houston Street and Alphabet city due to the increase of drugs and crime in that area.  They relocated to 645 Water street in the Lower East Side. It was a nicer apartment building in the mist of other housing projects, but here there were no crumbling buildings. This was the birthplace of where my graffiti path began.  It was the place where I first saw and stared at Lee Ones Iconic Lion Mural and thought to myself that one day I will paint a mural. It was at that moment where it all began, where the creative torch was lit, and where the passion within me came to life.

They say do not look at the moments in life that define you, for they have already come and gone. Well, these were some of those moment that inspired me as a child, that  gave birth to artist that resides deep within me.