The son of a screen printer from the mountains of Utah, I began by career at HUSH, an experiential design and architecture studio in DUMBO that translates brands’ DNA into interactive spaces. Before linking with CENTER, I designed projects for Equinox, WeWork, and Netflix as I freelanced for NY studios, including Gretel, Red Antler, and the Whitney Museum.
I’ve been privileged to work with a range of industry-defying clients including Kin Euphorics (pre- and post- Bella Hadid juice), olive oil-based non-dairy ice cream Wildgood, and the forward-thinking team at Simulate. I have experience with brands both large (Apple) and small (3 Loves).
CENTER Design
Gretel
HUSH
Red Antler
Whitney Museum
Apple
Coinbase
Equinox
Ghetto Gastro
HEYWEAR
Kin Euphorics
Liquid Death
Magic Spoon
Netflix
Simulate
Swoon
WeWork
Wildgood
Zillow
Feb 2020 MICA
Dec 2020 Corcoran
Dec 2021 Corcoran
Oct 2023 MICA
It’s a quiet night on my terrace roof near Chapultepec, in Mexico City. I’ve just come from a dinner with new friends in the neighborhood of Condesa. If the pandemic taught me anything, it’s that the virtual keyhole is no substitute for real, lived, varied experience. So I ran from New York, to Utah, to Mexico City to flee the US bubble. In New York, it was easy to be subsumed by my position at CENTER — it was how I spent all my time. In Utah, it was being a son to my mother. While working remotely, moving to a new city gave me the opportunity to reencounter myself and my influences.
I’m still influenced by the “default graphic design” of my screenprinter father, with a new layer of how those codes transmute across culture (here in Mexico — what is the vernacular of the cerrajería or mueblería?). Yet I strive to create work tempered by history, by knowing. Informed by Jasper Johns’s symbols. Robert Rauschenberg’s collages. Artist Jeremy Deller’s present-day conceptualism and humor.
I’m interested in urbanism, architecture, and the collapse of space and time through digital tools fostered by post-pandemic globalization. I’m fascinated that Google Maps, Google Images, and Instagram have changed the way we read the syntax of the city. No longer confined by physical sensation, we experience cities as a series of covetable experiences, planed for and experienced through sharing them. How can I read the city as a text? Or read a book as a spatial journey?
I’m exhausted by how much of the world is driven by expensive, destructive, depreciating purchases like automobiles and homes. Entropy fuels the economy. Americans ask “which countertop should we buy?” instead of “do we need to buy a countertop?” — questions only exacerbated by the spectacle of the infinite scroll. I want to take seriously the designer’s obligation to encourage adaptation, reuse, and responsible consumption — no matter where in the world.
I think it takes an outsider’s eye to see what is beautiful about a place. I’m currently creating works inspired by my new context, rooted in the cultural history and complexity of CDMX as lived first-hand. I’m searching for abstract ways to tell these stories — my gradient-sky silhouettes of tree branches being an apt metaphor for my interests. The space between people and relationships; present and future; where I am and where I want to be. Fluidity between known elements.
Design can shape those elements and leave room for people’s stories. Stories found in the light of my neighbors’ houses near the Reforma: streamers from a recent birthday. A cat picking its way across a wall. Laundry drying on the line. Lives lived through big, exposed windows. Stories of other people on other terraces on other roofs, lit by the moon and the sign of the Telmex building.