Connect What is your favorite type of art to create?

Poetry, film, novels. Anything that takes people on a journey. Not just within a story, but within themselves. My work isn’t meant to make a statement, but ask questions. The hope is to invoke contemplation. Life, humanity. Who am I to tell anyone how to feel about anything? These things must be figured out within the self.

Where do you find inspiration?

Pain. People. Trauma. Nature, aka God’s art. I was abused as a child in and out of mental health facilities. Beatings, locked in empty rooms, abandoned, not allowed outside. I believe that’s why I feel so free alone in the woods creating. Yet my suffering was not so special. I believe we’ve all felt abandoned, alone, unable to escape. And we all search for comfort, love. To feel safe. I pull from all this and explore it in art.

What would you do with $25,000?

I’d put it towards releasing my novel Like Sheep. Maybe it’s my magnum opus or perhaps just the most revealing piece of mine. It’s fiction, yet so much me is there. Things that I suffered. My poetry. My pain. Anger. Yet, hope and redemption. The idea that no matter what we’ve done, how far into the darkness we’ve been pulled, every moment of life is precious, an opportunity for change. To be our best self, be of service to the world. And I’d be remiss not to donate some towards troubled youth.