I think the museum should be an arena in which ideals can hash it out, fight it out, tooth and nail, for attention.

Artwork operates on two different levels: On one level there's artwork as a mode of expressivity, and then there's the other side, where the image is a construction that is meant to engage in a discursive field in order to preform a particular function.

The appearance is the allusion of abstraction when in fact I am in control of every aspect of that symmetry.

I really just want to be an inspiration. I'm a regular guy, that had a dream, that came from a small town, that wanted to play guitar and just liked playing. I want to encourage people.

The condition of visibility as it relates to black people was crucial. Connected to that, I've always been interested in science fiction and horror films and was acutely aware of the political and social implications of Ralph Ellison's description of invisibility as it relates to black people, as opposed to the kind of retinal invisibility that H.G. Wells described in his novel Invisible Man.

Black painters have done all kinds of work. It's the treatment of forms they engage in-that's what determines the value of the work, not whether you call them a black artist or not.

I try to tell a story when I'm playing. I try to make an emotional connection when I'm playing versus before I played just to play. Now there's a sense of purpose of why I play, of how I play. So people can actually feel what I'm saying to them.