ONE-MAN BAND: Jack of ALL Trades 🪚📷🎨🎥💻

November 29 is getting closer. Every time I look at the calendar now, that date feels less like some distant idea and more like something that is actually coming for me.

#DearMirror is no longer this project that I am simply “working toward.” It is becoming real, physical and tangible. The paintings exist. The website exists. The content exists. The plans exist. The details are starting to fall into place.

And now, apparently, I’m building frames.

The funny thing is, in the beginning, I wasn’t even considering frames. Framing artwork can get expensive very quickly, especially when you are preparing an entire exhibition, so I had pretty much accepted that all of my pieces would simply hang without them. Then my friend and fellow artist, Kevin Cooper, encouraged me to look at it differently.

He basically told me, “Why are you worrying about buying frames? Buy the raw materials and build them yourself. You know how to do it.”

And he was right. The wild part is, I had almost forgotten that I did.

When I was 21 years old, I started working in a frame store. Between two different framing shops, I spent about seven years around moulding, matting, measurements, mounting artwork, joining corners and all the other little details that go into presenting somebody else’s work properly. At the time, I had access to the proper equipment—professional saws, joining machines and tools designed specifically for the job.

Fast-forward more than twenty years, and here I am preparing my own first solo art exhibition, worrying about the cost of framing my own paintings. Kevin had to remind me that the knowledge never disappeared just because I hadn’t used it in years, and that I already had the tools needed to execute without all the fancy stuff.

That hit me because here I was focused on what I didn’t have. I don’t have a professional framing shop. I don’t have an underpinner. I don’t have a dedicated moulding saw. I don’t have a huge budget to send a stack of paintings off to be custom framed.

But I know how frames work.

So today, I started figuring it out with what I do have: a circular saw, a jigsaw, a hand saw, some clamps, two workbenches, birch plywood, hardwood moulding, a straight piece of wood that became my saw guide…and a brain.

Gattah use yuh brain.

My first cut through the quarter-inch birch plywood looked like the wood had lost a fight with a beaver. Splinters everywhere.

BRUH! WTF!

Then I learned something I genuinely did not know before today: I could adjust the depth of the blade on my circular saw. You would think I should have known this right? I mean, I've had the tools for a hot minute HOWEVER putting them to use often is not something that happens.

I lowered it so only a small amount of the blade passed through the plywood, supported the sheet properly, clamped down my homemade straightedge and tried again.

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Night and day.

The cuts were cleaner, straighter and much easier to control. By the end of the afternoon, I had a stack of backs cut for several of the smaller paintings that I am considering framing for #DearMirror.

Somewhere in the middle of all of this, something much bigger hit me.

Every single skill I have learned throughout my life has somehow found its way into this exhibition. Every single one.

I painted the artwork. I photographed the artwork. I designed the graphics and built the website. I created the promotional content, shot and edited videos, created the branding, designed the merchandise, worked on the presentation, created the certificates and planned how the work would be displayed.

Now I am building and painting the frames.

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Even the skills I learned working in frame shops when I was 21 years old—skills that had been sitting unused for decades—suddenly have a purpose again.

That realization stopped me for a minute.

#DearMirror is called “Reflections of Me,” and somehow the process of building the exhibition has become just as much a reflection of me as the artwork itself.

For years, I have jokingly described myself as a jack of all trades and master of none. Photography, graphic design, painting, web design, video, audio, building things, fixing things, learning software, making things with my hands and creating things on a screen—I have always bounced between different interests, different skills and different creative outlets.

There have been times when I wondered if I should have picked one thing and stuck with it. Become “the photographer.” Become “the designer.” Become “the artist.”

But #DearMirror has made me look at that differently.

Maybe all of those things were never separate. Maybe I was collecting tools—not physical tools, but skills, experiences, ways of thinking and ways of solving problems. Somewhere along the way, all of those seemingly unrelated pieces became exactly what I needed to build this.

This entire exhibition has become a one-man band.

There are people who have encouraged me, advised me, supported me and helped push me when I needed it. Kevin reminding me that I already knew how to build frames is a perfect example of that. Sometimes somebody else has to hold up the mirror and remind you what is already there.

When it comes to actually creating this exhibition, though, I have been able to put almost every part of myself to work. I haven’t had to hand the creative vision over to somebody else.

The paintings are mine. The photographs are mine. The graphics are mine. The videos are mine. The website is mine. The presentation is mine.

And now, some of the frames will be mine too.

There is something incredibly satisfying about that, especially because today didn’t even start as some grand #DearMirror production day.

Before all of this framing madness, I finished shingling my doghouse roof.

Yes.

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Apparently I was a roofer this morning and a framer by the afternoon. A few hours earlier I was figuring out how shingles overlap. A few hours later I was measuring birch plywood and calculating shadow gaps for artwork.

That pretty much sums me up.

And strangely enough, that might be one of my favorite parts of this entire journey.

I am getting closer and closer to November 29, and the more I build, the more I realize that this exhibition is not just about the paintings that will hang on the walls. It is about everything it took to get them there.

The years of learning. The mistakes. The experiments. The jobs I had decades ago. The skills I picked up because I was curious. The things I taught myself because I couldn’t afford to pay somebody else. The things I learned simply because I wanted to know how they worked.

All of it came with me.

And now all of it is showing up.

Maybe being a jack of all trades was never something I needed to apologize for. Maybe that was the whole point.

Maybe the value was never in mastering only one thing. Maybe the value was in learning enough, trying enough, failing enough, adapting enough and staying curious enough that when the day finally came to build something that required every part of me, I could.

Today I built a roof. I cut framing backs. I rediscovered skills I hadn’t used in decades. And I was reminded that somewhere along the way, every version of me had been preparing for this one.

November 29 is getting closer, and piece by piece, I’m building #DearMirror.

Literally.

If you're interested in checking out my art show, please feel free to

R.S.V.P. HERE!

Funny enough, after spending today thinking about tools—physical ones, old skills, new skills and everything they've allowed me to create—my next episode of MY SHOW this Sunday is called “AI: TOOL OR THIEF?”

The timing couldn't be better. Be sure to check it out!

And if you missed the last episode of MY SHOW, check it out!