My interest in graffiti art began in 1993 with the discovery of hip-hop culture. As a teenager in the 1990s, I explored many subcultures: punk, grunge, hip-hop, alternative rock, skateboarding, comics, raves. Realizing I had no talent for music, my focus shifted to visual arts and the visual styles of hip-hop and rave culture were the most appealing. I found spray can art and a community of peers in my neighborhood in a middle-class suburb in Ohio, a rust belt state that offered a declining infrastructure to explore: abandoned factories, rail yards, and highway overpasses. Mostly, I wanted to get away from my upbringing in what I saw as a conformist, sexist and patriarchal Catholic school environment, and my prayers were answered when I got to attend a diverse public high school with a focus on arts education, Fort Hayes high school in downtown Columbus. Graffiti took me out of Ohio to big cities like Chicago and eventually New York, where I earned my BFA from the School of Visual Arts while writing graffiti every weekend. Upon graduating, I realized I had to earn a living, and sublimated my spray can obsession into a studio practice. Before I retired from graffiti, I explored the burgeoning street art scene with a series of bespoke ceramic tiles that I pasted to walls around NYC. Despite a pervasive culture of misogyny in graffiti art, I have made a name for myself and brought respect to the art form, which I see as a uniquely American, urban folk art.