For an Art school in Amish country, it got pretty wild. First day upon moving in I found myself ready to die in the back seat of some fool's busted 5 speed Honda Civic with 3 other kids as he whipped around hairpin turns along a mountain ridge while we burned blunts.

6 months later I was the only one left of that entire group of about 8 friends. Kids dropped out one after the other. That schools retention rate must have been less than 40%. They get caught smoking pot or other drugs and got kicked out, financial aid falls through for others.

Kids run out of food and money and had to drop out, got caught tattooing, caught having big parties, got caught up in depression, kids died.

Some never had any business being at art school to begin with. They think it's gonna be easy liberal bullshit when their parents are forcing them into ANY school or face getting kicked out, or dropping their support. They never had artistic talent to begin with and never needed a portfolio to be accepted. Financial aid was giving out loans to anyone who could write a signature. They didn't want to be poor anymore and school seemed to be the best way to eventually earn a descent living.

I'll admit, I got some bedroom tattoos in those days as well.

As I the hooligans got filtered out, I found a group of kids were really serious about art and design. Some of them could throw together award winning websites virtually overnight. Others made giant on-canvas graffiti art like you'd see in downtown Miami and painted digitally with the same expertise. I saw flawless portraits painted in a couple hours, Impressionist watercolor like Albrecht Durer and so much more.

We had a wonderful community of talent and healthy competition. There was brotherhood and sisterhood and love interests. We made sure we all were fed and had rides, or help with schoolwork. We partied and studied together.

At the time, I felt like my household had the best people coming around. I had friends welcome to the door anytime they passed. My roommate CJ and I were in the same oil painting class. We'd show each other our progress. My other roommate, Brandon was the graffiti artist. Grandeur, clashing color and flow of pattern was his forte. All of our art balanced each other. We cooked and smoked together.

A few never got caught tattooing and became really good in those 4 years of tattooing in our school housing complex, only a quarter mile from campus. I never wanted to get into tattooing. My closest friend Brooklynn tattooed and I saw the grueling process. I watched the inspiration, composition and execution.

CJ passed away. He took his life. We'd been as close as you could be with someone whom you's split bread and painted with. He lived 10 feet from my bedroom door. We slapped hands when we passed in the stairs. It hurt us all though.

His love interest still isn't ok. His mother even worse. For some people, wounds don't heal. He had so many friends and such a big family.

A great artist as well. He and Brooklynn tattooed each other and he placed my first ink in my skin.

It wasn't long after that I had to graduate college and move home. I felt like there was a hole in my heart. In 4 years of living outside my hometown, I had evolved into a new person. I think we all evolve with new experiences. Mine had redefined who I was in a short period of time. Thats when I really started to think about what I was doing as I sat in an unpacked room in my great uncle's house little house on the edge of NJ suburbia... and immediately started researching tattooing

Thanks for reading! I still haven't posted any tattoos but I'll get to it. These are drawings from school, and a painting from a class. The last is art I interpreted from an exercise for tattoo design.