ART OUT LOUD: Why I Create So the Next Generation Knows They Can Too

For a long time, I thought self expression was just about what I liked: the clothes I wore, the music I listened to, the art I made, the ideas running around in my head, the way I designed a space or put together an event. As I have gotten older, I have realized it is bigger than that because every time I give myself permission to be fully me, somebody else is watching and realizing they might have permission to do the same thing. Especially the kids.

Seeing ART OUT LOUD across the front page of my hometown newspaper hit differently because that is pretty much what I have spent my life learning how to do. I am not always the quietest person in the room, and neither are my ideas. I like color. I like weird shit. I like mixing things together that people do not immediately expect to belong together. For years that was simply how I expressed myself. Now I realize there are young people watching me do it, and that changes the responsibility. If they see me confidently creating something that did not exist before, maybe they start believing their ideas deserve some room too.

Sometimes Kids Just Need to See It

I have never been interested in fitting neatly inside one box. I love music, art, fashion, design, toys, sneakers, vinyl, crazy ideas, colors that probably should not work together but somehow do and creating experiences people remember. Spill Your Creativity came from all of those pieces of me instead of me trying to choose just one. Maybe that is one of the biggest things I can teach the next generation: you do not have to shrink yourself down to make yourself easier for other people to understand.

My mother always told me that I could be anything I wanted to be. As a kid, I heard it one way. Now I understand it differently. She was not necessarily telling me to pick one thing and become it. She was giving me permission to imagine possibilities for myself. That kind of permission matters, and now I want to pass it forward.

I can tell a kid all day that they should be creative, believe in themselves and try something new, but there is something different about actually showing them what that looks like. Showing up wearing what I want to wear, making weird shit because I think it is cool, building Boom Bear from an idea in my head, turning a storefront into a place where art, music, toys, community, self care and culture can somehow all live under the same roof and taking an idea people might not immediately understand and saying, Nah, watch me. That is influence too.

Let Them Find Their Own Answer

Influence is not always somebody standing on a stage with a microphone telling people what to do. Sometimes it is a kid watching an adult be comfortable enough to try something different. Sometimes it is letting them choose the wild color instead of telling them what matches, handing them a blank figure and not giving them instructions about what it is supposed to look like or simply asking, “What do YOU think?” Adults spend a lot of time telling kids what the answer is. I want SYC to also be one of those places where somebody asks them what their answer could be.

Some of my favorite moments have nothing to do with somebody buying something. It is watching a kid stare at a blank canvas because they are not sure what to do, then suddenly something clicks. Now they are mixing colors, paint is everywhere, and they have an entire story about what they are creating. Then they hold it up with that look: I made this. That moment is bigger than paint. They made a decision, trusted themselves and created something that did not exist before they touched it. That is confidence being built in real time. Creativity teaches problem solving, experimentation and how to screw something up, adjust and keep moving instead of deciding the whole thing is ruined. Adults could use a little more of that too, if we are keeping it real.

I Want Them to See More Possibilities

When kids come through SYC, interact with Boom Bear, attend one of our events or simply see what we are building, I want them to see possibility. I want the kid who draws all day to realize somebody actually makes a living drawing. I want the kid obsessed with sneakers to learn there are designers, buyers, marketers, photographers, store owners and creative directors behind those shoes. I want the kid who loves music to know the only options are not becoming a rapper or singer because there are producers, engineers, DJs, designers, executives, photographers, event producers and a hundred other lanes around that culture. Most importantly, I want the kid with the strange idea nobody understands yet to protect that idea long enough to figure out what it could become, because sometimes the weird kid just grows up to become the creative director.

This Is Why I Keep Creating

As I continue building THIS IS SYC, I think more and more about legacy, but not legacy in the dramatic put my name on a building kind of way. I am talking about leaving people with permission: permission to experiment, be curious, change direction, make something terrible before they make something incredible, dress differently, think differently, create differently and build something that did not exist before. Permission to understand that being different does not mean something is wrong with you, because sometimes different is exactly where the good shit starts.

If one kid sees me building all of this and thinks, “Maybe I could make my idea real too,” then I influenced something much more important than a purchase. I influenced possibility. That is what Spill Your Creativity has always meant to me. Not everybody creating the same thing, following my style or trying to become me. Actually, I hope they do not. The goal is for the next generation to become more of themselves, and I just want to make sure they grow up knowing they have permission to do it.

Create something. Try something. Wear the weird shit. Pick the color nobody else picked. Ask questions. Make mistakes. Change your mind. Start over. Whatever you do, do not spend your whole life waiting for somebody else to tell you that you are allowed to be creative. You already are.

Maybe that is what ART OUT LOUD really means to me now. Not making everybody pay attention to what I create, but creating loudly enough that the next kid realizes they do not have to whisper who they are.