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Photo: Ashley McLay Culver

I was really into bass growing up. I would mow lawns and sell weed to invest into my car. My shit thumped. I’d enter bass competitions and shit – it was pretty ridiculous. My system was definitely worth more than my car.
Running

Music was my outlet. I always had a bunch of fucked up shit going on around me, but I’d get in my car, turn up the music, and let the rage out. Me and my friends would pile in, crack the windows, blaze one, have fun, and forget about our problems – with the bass tickling our noses. I lost some hearing, but maintained my sanity and built some life long friendships.

You can see my love for music in my work. Like a good song, the visual has to have flow, it has to have rhythm, and it has to make you feel something.

I’m currently focusing my work in the music industry as well as developing some original content. Ocoē, a film and production company I recently launched, just optioned our first book to be developed into a TV series. You know, just having fun and staying busy.

How I Ended Up Here

I was born and raised in Tennessee – a state in the South Eastern United States – in a city called Nashville. I grew up surrounded by amazing friends and family. We’ve seen a lot, we’ve been through a lot, and we still deal with our challenges.

I was 18 years old when I met a fashion photographer named Asha Fuller in a strip mall in Nashville. He told me that if I wanted to, he thought I could be an international model. Less than six months later I was sipping tea at Gucci’s Fashion House in Milan, Italy meeting Tom Ford. I couldn’t handle the pressure, the travel, and all the crazy things that were happening around me. I had never been to Europe or traveled by myself, and at 18 I was in this very foreign land – both literally and figuratively. I returned to Nashville out of panic, but it was only a few months later that I was headed back out determined to conquer my fear of the unknown.

After 5 years on the road, I had had enough. I returned to Nashville, became a recluse, and started to deal with my own personal issues that I had been running from. Even though modeling was the start of a new me, I still wasn’t dealing with my challenges in a healthy way. It was definitely a rough patch, but on the other side of it I found myself in love with an incredible partner and dedicated to the art-form of film & video.

I realized that I had spent 5 years on set with the world’s leading photographers, creative directors, stylists, h&m… I saw exactly where David Burton, Alasdair McLellan and Satoshi Saikusa set their key lights – because they were on me. I learned the attention to detail, the workflow, and the nuance of creating incredible imagery from the masters.

The product of it all is Sixteen. Slowly but surly, I’m making my mark.