Bread from Lemons: The Transformative Power of Resilience

 In this inspiring episode, Nigerian-born artist Jeremiah Onifadé joins Lisane Basquiat to share his extraordinary story of resilience, faith, and creative transformation. From surviving religious conflict as a teenager to discovering art as a means of healing and expression, Jeremiah’s journey reveals how adversity can shape purpose. His path from Nigeria to the U.S. and into the art world is a testament to survival through creativity and the power of believing in possibility.

Together, they explore how Jeremiah’s installations — like his recent Boat Project — serve as living metaphors for life’s journey, courage, and rebirth. The conversation dives deep into themes of displacement, emotional identity, and spiritual freedom, offering listeners an honest look at what it means to turn pain into purpose and struggle into art.

Represented by Nicole Plantin at Sœur Consulting Agency, Jeremiah continues to create work that bridges cultures and conversations, inspiring audiences to find beauty and strength in their own stories.

Learn how to set boundaries without guilt. Join Lisane's next Protect Your Peace Shaping Session today: https://shapingfreedom.com/boundaries-workshop

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
What I found profound was that my situation was very
similar to those people walking in. When I told them
my stories, they could relate. Life is going to keep
giving your lemons, So you have to decide how it's
going to feed you for breakfast, launch, and dinner, not
just lemonade. I mean, you can survive on a lemonade forever.
You have to convert lemons into bread for breakfast, chicken
thighs for lunch, lasania for dinner. That is hard.

Speaker 2 (00:31):
Welcome to the Shaping Freedom Podcast, where we dive into
conversations that inspire personal growth, transformation, and clarity and challenging times.
I'm your host, Lussan Basquiato. I am having fun as
I enter into this next conversation with someone who feels

(00:53):
like a friend already, and this is the very first
time that we're meeting each other. But I love to laugh.
I love to laugh, and I love great energy, and
that is what I'm feeling from this person. And then
I'm going to pronounce his name, hopefully correctly.

Speaker 1 (01:11):
We'll see, We'll see, Yeah, so we both have a
nice first name. Than the last thing, you have to
prepare yourself. You have to.

Speaker 2 (01:19):
Prepare for you have to practice, so we'll see how
I do. This episode dives into the transformative power of
art as a path to survival, identity, and freedom. Nigerian
born artist Jeremiah Onifada. Jeremiah on Fide shares how his
family's displacement during a religious crisis became the catalyst for

(01:43):
his creative awakening and how art has remained a bridge
between pain and possibility. From using found materials to curating
powerful installations in the United States, Jeremiah's work is a
testament to human resilience and spiritual liberation. I am looking

(02:04):
so forward to this conversation. What I've learned, or what
I've heard, is that you are a man whose story
embodies what it means to turn adversity into art.

Speaker 1 (02:24):
I always have my way with pronouncing that last days, so.

Speaker 3 (02:30):
I want to hear.

Speaker 2 (02:30):
I want to hear how you pronounced my name, Jeremiah.

Speaker 1 (02:33):
So I used to think it was Basquiat because it's
wonderful saying it that way. It's just so foreign. But
when I learned it was Basquiat, and I was like,
both ways. I like it, but that's just how I
learned to say it.

Speaker 2 (02:48):
So how do you say it? Which way do you
like more?

Speaker 1 (02:50):
How I will lie bas is what I like.

Speaker 2 (02:57):
I don't like how you pronounce your name. Let me
tell you out.

Speaker 1 (03:01):
It's like, who's your favorite artist? Basqueya. So that's for
the school of art, that's for the the art when
you say basque ya. But when you're with your friends
that don't know about art, and then they're like, whose
art work did you see this weekend? Oh I went
to someone's collection and I saw Mosqui. They're like, oh.

Speaker 3 (03:27):
So Jeremiah, Okay, wait a minute, So we didn't say
basquea for art folks, like literally, where Haitian is basquee?

Speaker 1 (03:38):
You're saying that almost like, you know, French work kind
of sound bourgeois, kind of like it's like, yeah, both
French and Bogie. Even say bread croissants, it's like it's bourgeois,
you know whatever, because you have to prepare your art
and prepare to roll it, so you can't just add.

Speaker 2 (04:00):
Wow, wow, wow, I don't know how to.

Speaker 1 (04:08):
Hey, I'm just giving listen.

Speaker 2 (04:12):
I appreciate it. I appreciate it. We are already rolling.
I appreciate it. This is Lisan Basquia, not Basquiat.

Speaker 1 (04:23):
Basquia. You have to slow down and pronounce it. Okay,
that's it. You take your time. Take your time. Well
the Nigeran and me doesn't let me relax, but I'll
try to relax.

Speaker 2 (04:34):
I would appreciate that at least for this hour.

Speaker 1 (04:37):
I will wonderful, of course, but for now.

Speaker 2 (04:41):
I wanted to mention that Billy Johnson, who's the pr
person for Shaping Freedom, had the opportunity and blessing of
experiencing you at a recent confidence con event with kJ Rose.
That I was hating on the fact that I didn't

(05:02):
get to go because I wanted to go and I couldn't,
But he came back and shared with the team how
amazing his experience was with you, and so, Jeremiah, I
am very very excited to have you on the show.
Welcome to the Shape and Freedom Podcast.

Speaker 1 (05:19):
Jeremiah, thank you so much, Leisan. I pronounced it the
right way. Yeah, okay, I've been playing in my mind
inside you, but thank you so much for having me.
Thanks for bringing me on to your wonderful platform. I've
heard about your platform wait before I met you, because

(05:41):
of course most artists know about Basquia, and we tried
to dig in as much as possible. Hey, what was
he eating when it was a lie? Who was he
around when it was a lie? Did this make him
paint this way? So it's just kind of dream like
and surreal. When Billy, well, my wonderful friend Nicole said,

(06:04):
and she's the sort and there's another Haven name. I
don't know how to pronounce that agency name properly, but
she introduced me to Billy and said, oh, Billy works
with Lassan Baskia. I said, that name sounds familiar, so
part of my art history, that's where your name sits.
It's like when I'm thinking of when you're in the

(06:26):
studio and you're referencing materials to work on, and you're
going to carovade you the Alaskis tsha. Oh, let me
put a little bit of pop on in there. But
of course you just don't go into the work. You're
looking at the situationship of those artists, the specificity what
they were consuming or And I said, that's where I

(06:48):
remember the name from. So it's wonderful meeting and thanks
for having me on your platform.

Speaker 2 (06:53):
So nice to meet you. I'm having so much fun already.
Who do you know how to spell Nicole's agency, so
that we can be sure to shout that out.

Speaker 1 (07:02):
I think it's s o E. You are.

Speaker 2 (07:07):
Sore sore, Yeah, sore sore agency. Yes, all right, So
there you go. Look look that up and maybe you
can let us know a little bit more about Nicole
as we continue the conversation.

Speaker 1 (07:20):
And it might have a different pronunciation maybe, So we
spelled it.

Speaker 2 (07:27):
We spelled it. So this was going to be a
conversation about art and your journey, and we're turning it
into a conversation about words and pronunciation.

Speaker 1 (07:39):
It starts with that.

Speaker 2 (07:41):
That's right, that's right. So I understand that you have
an origin story that takes you from Nigeria and your
family leaving. Can you share a little bit about that.
Let's just start there if that's where you want to start.

Speaker 1 (08:04):
Sure. I always say my art practice is just a
documentation of my life pretty much. It's just my whole
life and my life broken down into chunks. It's like
a book with chapters, and every now and then, when
I make a New York or when I talk about it,
I take a page or a chapter out of it

(08:25):
and say, okay, what do we talk about now? Because
there's a lot there's a lot that I'm still unpacking.
I've never fully understood. But if we have to go back.
I have two siblings and I'm the oldest. We're born
in the northern part of Nigeria, so but we're not

(08:45):
from the north. We're from the west, which is Yoruba.
Well the proper pronunciation is Yoruba where Urba by tried.
But we're born in the house aside, which means it's
kind of weird. Sometimes when there's a crisis this or
there's a riot, so everyone has to have to band together.
But there's another situation with that. I'm a Christian and

(09:09):
most of the North is not Christian. You have Muslims
and traditional religion. And I was thirteen while the world
was celebrating Y two K and advancement. For us, it
was different because in the North there was a religious crisis,
so where there's a fight between Christians and Muslims. And

(09:30):
the first thing in my mind is I unpack all this.
How do people go around looking for are you Christian
and Muslim? So it was that detailed where they stand
in the middle of the road and they try to
figure out if you're Christian and Muslim. But What was
most impactful for me was just you know, looking outside
during the riot and seeing folks that I thought were

(09:53):
my neighbors or who were my neighbors killing each other,
literally at thirteen, watching killing going on, and at that
single situation, and it was in March of twenty of
two thousand, a single situation changed everything. We're from a
middle class My dad is an engineer, and my mom

(10:17):
taught Yuruba language in secondary school, the same second school
I went to, which is high school here, and everything switch,
so we lost everything right in that moment. For the
fear of losing us, my mom suggested that myself and
my siblings and her go to the military barracks where

(10:38):
because you worked out of military school, we go stay
with a friend there and while my dad stayed home
because there were burning houses, So my dad decided to
stay home. Even till now, I never thought what must
it have been like for him to stay home. So
we stayed back and I never saw our house until
we moved, So the decision was made right then and

(11:00):
there for us to move. And all we moved with
was just our clothes and nothing else because we couldn't
move for any of our property we just left it there.
It was unsafe to go back to. And once striking
issue for me is how quickly your life can switch.
You know, you go from the typical household, not very rich,

(11:23):
but you know, middle class, you can afford food. My
mom had a kaosk outside, which is one of the
artworks I've made, And that's why installation is very interesting
to me. I always want to touch and feel those
things back so that I don't lose them, but I
also want to lose them so I can remember you

(11:43):
have the ability to recover even if something is gone,
which is something I've always struggled with because when we
lost everything, moved from Kaduna to Ibadon, which is in
all your state, which is in the west. Remember I'm
from the West. I was born in the North, but
I've never really lived in the West, so I didn't

(12:04):
know what it was like to live in the West.
So it's like new adaptation at thirteen, trying to figure
out the proper way to even speak Yorba, because we
spoke Yorba, but you know, it's like being from New
York but speaking with New York accent in New Orleans.
You know, now, for the first time you're going back
to New Orleans and you're thinking, I'm from New Orleans.

(12:25):
Let me speak like they speaking. It's going to be different.
Then having friends, then realizing that if you lose everything,
starting backup is not easy. Our house, they didn't have
power for the first eight months, no electricity. I mean
coming from somewhere it wasn't like there was really electricity,
but we still had a decent amount where we moved from.

(12:49):
But coming to a place where there was nothing on
pedro stopped about zero point five miles from our house,
so pedroad, I mean, so you just have on payroad
leading to your house. Else. Water was just like you
need to fight for wel water in the morning. But
all that didn't really matter to me. Then we couldn't

(13:10):
afford a couch on mattress for eight months. I mean
we literally just slept on the floor. So it was
it was shaking to me. It was hard for me
to just realize that one single group of emotion, and
I always played back to who decided that crisis. We
decided the riot happened, and you know that decision affects

(13:34):
so many people's lives. But just a quick summary of
where and how you know the foundations of my interest
kind of practicing art unknowingly started and how the move
in my life started, how moving around started and fending
for just trying to get a green.

Speaker 2 (13:54):
Of pasture, and how was did you have? What was
your practice at that time, whether you called it that
or not exactly?

Speaker 1 (14:04):
So I didn't necessarily I didn't go to art school
in Nigeria. I only knew about drawing classes in secondary school.
So I the only safe place for me when everything
was chaotic is to draw. So we don't call it painting,
or we didn't call it painting in Niger and len're
not downplay the art school in Nigeria. I didn't call

(14:24):
it painting. I call it drawing. So it's just draw
and the best way to you know, to have a
dream is to draw out. You know. Imagine I have
a house that has a nice sofa, I have a
house that has and that has television, and you draw

(14:45):
electric bolb and people say electric bolb in your at
work and they see have a narrow pepper. They don't
understand that all these things where they very reachable, they
were far. You know. It was like me and my
younger brother will dream of like one day Mom and
Dad would have enough money to buy a sofa like
the one we used to have. Then we really used

(15:05):
to have one. Where's the photo, Mom, where's the photo?
We didn't have and we're all young, so everything was
like a dream, not a dream? Was it true? Was
it not true? Okay, can we go back and look
at where we used to live now? So I'll draw
all that out. And we struggled. So from thirteen through
seventeen we couldn't find a nice house because we just

(15:27):
couldn't afford it. We moved from that first house we
lived in it's a place called Iyano Chuch and so
another place called our Rule that was even more terrible.
And you know, the survival thing is just to just
draw your way out of it so you don't feel
so sad and depressed, and just imagine for hours. You know,

(15:48):
there's nothing to do. Just get a pencil, get a
paper and just draw. But where things took a different
turn was when we moved again the third house. Now
this is on our ball last street, Chief Albolla Street
in bad.

Speaker 2 (16:02):
And how old are you there now?

Speaker 1 (16:05):
I was I think fifteen going on sixteen, because I
finished high school at sixteen. Now we're closer a little
with coming out of kind of the rural side of town.
We're moving towards the city. Now. I was starting to
have friends, and there was a place called a cyber cafe.

(16:25):
You know, Internet wasn't available in people's houses. It was
in a cafe. If people come to browse, they buy
minutes by the we call it minutes. It's just a
code for you to type in and have access to
the internet. There was one side of the building was
a business center. The other side is the side of cafe.
So business folks come to the business center to type

(16:46):
out documents like proposal or line shit or invoice, and
the other side is the cyber cafe. You know, you
need images for your documents, so you have to go online,
go browse the world and see. I knew how to draw.
It was just easy for me to go online whatever
I imagine, get a bit map and create that logo.

(17:06):
My brother knew how to type. So what we'll do
is we realized, okay, we could tell people who do
this stuff for you, just buy us minutes, you know,
buy us overnight minutes, so you can browse for one hour.
You can browse with thirty minutes, but if you have
longer projects, you can just buy the minutes for overnight.
It's like going on like twelve mid nine to six am.

(17:27):
So my brother and myself would rush and finish their
project in one hour. That the next five six hours,
just as we browse the world, I started looking up
art school because that's the only thing I really knew
how to do, like paint, and I just imagine, like, well,
maybe there's a school out there back and take drawing
instant they'll admit me. Yeah, it was actually a thing.

(17:51):
So I discovered SCAD and all the school SCAD Savannah
Color Arts and Design. It was in well it's in Savannah,
Georgia also has Atlanta. But there was a problem. I
couldn't affoord it. So I came home. I told my
mom and she's like, uhuh, let's pray, Mom. That doesn't

(18:12):
even give us enough minutes to go to the cafe.
The next thing just added more to the wahala we have.
So my brother and I did well with what we're doing.
He did actually good. So get to the point where
we actually have about thirty people lined up, what yeah,
more than thirty to type, I'd have about fifty people

(18:33):
lined up to do design. Then he graduated from there
to While I was doing my school, I was part
of the first few people to have a DHL or
courier express just have a motorcycle come deliver something at
a cafe from overseas, and they'll say, what is that.
I mean, think about a guy who has no family
member overseas.

Speaker 2 (18:53):
I mean we called bougie. You called the basque as bougie.
That that's pretty bougie.

Speaker 1 (18:58):
That's survival.

Speaker 2 (19:00):
We had like fifteen and DHILD motorcycle coming to pick
up your awares for your business.

Speaker 1 (19:07):
That's uh, we didn't even know it was a business. Yeah, Mom,
salary got paid once a month and me and my
wife always joke about this. My brother and myself are
always in line to collect a salary for our next project.
So we just said mom, I asked first. I asked first.
So it's that. And the thing is, once one of
us spends it on the project we have, and the

(19:29):
project we both had was to travel over we had
no other project we're looking for. I mean the first
when I was fifteen, the first place I fired was
the University of West Indies and that's a different story
because I got admissions to it. We crowdfunded, my mom
funded all her salary and everything was seventy thousand ire
and I got on a bus from Nigeria to send

(19:52):
it down. That's where my money finished. I was trying
to get to West Indies, you know, because I heard
you could you could go to Senegal and from Senegal
go to Cape Verde and get on a plane. But
you know, when the money finished, I was working a
side of cafe. But that's a different story for another day.
In Senegal. But I didn't think of it as a business.

(20:16):
I just knew art. For me, drawing was just survival instinct.
Do you need something made? And my brother and I
will back up all this money and slowly, you know,
we would make twenty thousand hours, thirty thousand hours. We'll
save it up. We'll help our mom with what we
could help her. And you know, we were like, okay,

(20:39):
I guess it's time. Let's see if we can really
afford to pay the application for this school, which is
fifty dollars and for you to pay you have to
look with someone where you can pay the money to
the and they pay a credit card. See so from
going from not being able to afford food, I was
able to save a fifty dollars then paid after Asia

(21:00):
feed to SCAD and scadd said, okay, your admission is
accepted paid tuition. Now this was in two thousand and six.
I couldn't afford the tuition, so I had the admission
were scheduled for the next year, so let's defer it.
Then I was browsing on the website and I saw

(21:21):
you could send your portfolio in and I came up
with some drawings, a bunch of them, staved up for
DHL and nailed it to Savannah and they gave me
partial partial scholarship. So, oh wow, I didn't it was
a partial scholarship. I thought I had the full scholarship.
Now you have to understand getting the visa to the

(21:42):
US from nine there's a whole different celebration that's in
one of the series of my work, A Night of
Good News. This is a whole celebration. It's like a
whole party. So and you need to have time with
members here. So going from someone who has nobody, not
knowing what the country's like to get an admission, it
was a big deal. So we raked up everything we

(22:14):
had and at the airport of my parents and I'm
just keeping over a lot of story here, but at
the airport, my dad, who was wonderful, was able to
come up with the flight transport to get a flight ticket,
and they were able also to get me two hundred dollars.

(22:35):
I had two hundred dollars, I had my ticket, I
had a backpack, but I didn't have the balance of
my treation fee. I haven't paid for accommodation, which is
bording you live on campus. I didn't even know who
was picking me up from the airport. So my flights
from Legos to Atlanta, I'll just come in.

Speaker 2 (22:57):
So this is just you or you and your brother.

Speaker 1 (22:59):
Oh, just me, just by yourself. My brother came the
following year, doing the exact thing thing I did.

Speaker 2 (23:05):
Okay, so wait, so you get there, So you get
to Atlanta.

Speaker 1 (23:09):
I get to Atlanta, I realized for the first time,
when you get to it, you're supposed to schedule someone
to pick you up at the airport. I've never traveled
on the plane. So this was at twenty one or
twenty two. I got to Atlanta, and I remember I
had a friend on Facebook, so I took someone's phone.
I browsed my Facebook real quick and I messaged her.

(23:30):
I said, I'm here in Atlanta. Can you no? I said,
can you guess? She said no. She said where are you, sa,
I'm in Atlanta where you live? That she didn't respond.
But I'm on the friend again who had a brother
in America. I just knew his brother was in America.

(23:51):
And I said, I'm in America. Do you know where
your brother? He says, his brother lives in Kentucky. So
he said, but my brother not available to receive you
for the next week. For the next three days, then
I stayed at the airport for about four hours. Then I'll
refresh my Facebook. When for my friend to respond, And

(24:12):
when she responded, she said, yeah, I leave in Alfaretta
all La Fayet and I said, could you please let
me sleep in your house up to three days? And
I said yeah. Then she came to pick me up
from there. I also messaged my friend in Nigeria about
the person in Kentucky and they put me on the

(24:34):
greyhound box after three days all the way to Kentucky.
I got to Kentucky and he said, so what's your
next fine? I said, I'm going to school, said, school
doesn't start for two weeks, but I go to work
and just stay stay here as I was there, just
hanging out. After two weeks, still with two hundred bucks,
well two hundred was now one forty because I've been

(24:56):
spending on Greyhound and trying to eat. When I finally
came on campus mid June twenty mid June of that summer,
I went to the admin office with my suitcase, my
backpack and one hundred and twenty dollars left, and they said,

(25:17):
first you need to pay the admission fee. Not the
admission fee. I think it's a deposit fee. It's five
hundred dollars. And you need to pay a deposit on
the hostel so you can have a place to board
and your balance on your tweation. And I said, no,
I have a scholarship. I said, the tweation is forty
thousand dollars. Your scholarship is twenty thousand. You owe twenty

(25:38):
I said, you know what, I have one hundred and
twenty dollars. You guys take it and I'll come back
with the rest. You know, I was tired, so they
just processed me and said we'll give you two weeks to
come up with it, so they gave me. I think
I was an ugly trope pal, so they let me
stay in one that dorm. I didn't why would I

(25:59):
even give them the entire one twenty dollars, right, So
I give them the entire hundred and twenty dollars. Now
I had to go from the admissions building to the
boarding room dragging my suitcakes. It was about two miles.
My roommate was a guy from I think Illinois. He
had the room set to fifty seven degrees. I was like,

(26:22):
oh my god, coming from a tropical country, I was shaking.

Speaker 2 (26:26):
It'sout like two degrees.

Speaker 1 (26:27):
And I didn't know anything about comforters. I didn't know
that was the thing. I didn't know blankets you need
to need it. So for the next two weeks I
slept without blankets, without comforters. I wore three of my
clothes at the same time to go to bed. Okay,
time to get hustling again. You know, as an international
student you have to get at a job on campus.

(26:52):
But it took a while to get a job. I mean,
I'm not the only one applying. Everybody on campus. I
found the films apartment. The camera department had a cage
where we store all the cameras for shooting for all
the students. So I applied to be a cage monitor.
Well that was coming. I started advertising I can draw,
I can paint if you want. I started getting people

(27:16):
who wanted me to do their homework. So I was
saying I had so much that I even gave out
some of those to my friends. He's a wonderful guy.
I think he's still in Niger. He's between Niger and
you give one for your Coroi. And I started, you know,
handing out work, saying I have drawings, I have people
who need logos design. And that was the first time

(27:37):
I knew that there's a difference between drawing and painting
and art. You know. I would go into the buildings
and I started learning about art history, art movements, art masters,
and for the first time I knew people turned this

(27:58):
into a real life career, and it shaped societies, and
it really turned around the idea of your understanding. But
you know, and at that point, I made it a
point not to draw the typical human being anymore, because
all my life, the regular drawing, you know, of the

(28:19):
human body or the typical everyday life. It was a
struggle thing for me. You know, when I look at realism,
it doesn't look it's a wonderful work of art, But
for me, it signals possible. That's just what I see.
Let me paint you, let me paint your grandma for
fifty dollars. It's just it's like us slim to me.

(28:41):
But I wanted something that was the personal, personalnification of myself.
I had to come up with my own because when
I read art masters, they have a visual language of them.
Stuff something that you see and you remember them. You know,
you don't need to remember their name, you don't need
to remember their faces. You need to use it needs

(29:02):
to signify something to me, and I wanted to know
what was one thing that I really struggled. It was emotions.
I just really never understood it. I didn't know it
was a thing, but it was the single driver that
pushed me and my family out of a situation. You know,
the emotions of these people deciding, well you can't be

(29:23):
this religion, you have to be this religion. Well you're
from here, and let's remember that every idea and every
thought process as a deliberation by our emotions. You know,
it's the whole set of beings in there, sitting there
deciding should we start riots or should we not? You know,

(29:44):
there's a decision made in there. So I wanted to
start giving faces and names to these emotions. I wanted
a character that I represented is I've never seen anyone
say this is what the image of an emotion looks like.
I would ask people, can you represent them? Shoot for
me visually? And I don't know. It's just a feeling,
you know. And I said, that looks like a warm

(30:05):
like a snake, like a rope, and you know that
births me coming up with like that. I yet, okay,
I can name it cards. And I wanted a character
that kind of reminded me of my journey because I
was always thinking of when I go to the West,
you know, wherever the Colonia Masters came from, us be better, right,

(30:26):
Whenever I go to the West and see the cartoons
of Tom and Jerry, I've always watched, maybe you will
be better. But I wanted that to be part of
a fan of my journey. And I wanted the character
that that looked like, you know, the cartoons I've been seeing,
and and just as a stamp that references. It's kind

(30:54):
of a visual map. You know. When people see it,
they think it's a cartoon, but it's just a romant
remembers that you wanted this lifestyle that you saw growing up,
and you chaste after it. So that's where a cartoon
came in from me. It's a colonial and pre colonial

(31:15):
ideology for me. You know, it's like, now I'm thinking
of why was our society like that? Why was Nigeria
like that? Oh? Go read Nigeria in history? Where did
Nigeria come from? Oh there was colonization before them. Oh
what did colonial territories look like. Oh there's a place
called Britain. There's a place called Sweden. Oh what are

(31:37):
they doing over there? And you see cartoons and I'm like, okay,
this character I've been watching from moment and I stole,
I borrowed from those characters, and I'm like, okay, that's
going to be one aspect of this emotion I'm trying
to draw because I wanted to be a timestamp. I
wanted to be a visual lexicon for myself of like

(31:59):
I remember that this character was driven by migration to
be born, It was birthed out of my interest in
migrating to a certain place, and with that I started
on an idea of let's name it orbs. And those
two words sound like English orbs and cards, they're not English.

(32:21):
They're actually short for Nigerian terms. So orbs is short
for horrible horble's It can be derogatory, but it can
be also a nice term. So let's start with a
nice term. It can be a signification for somebody which chubby,
well to do from a well to do family. So
your friend is horrible. Your friend is chubby and nice

(32:42):
and well to do. You know, they have it good.
So when you have well to do friends, that's what's
going to mean to them. When you have not so
well to do friends and you're calling somebody aurable, then
you can be signifying a more derogatory term, like speaking
of them having a bigger body part or something. So
it was very important to me because I wanted to

(33:03):
be the you know, I wanted to be well. So
the character was from that standpoint, Let's call it orbs
like a nickname for urble, orbs. Orble orbs and CODs
is more intricate because in Nigeria, if you don't have money,
to buy fish or meat or chicken, you can buy
something called stockfish is dried fish. And you might have

(33:26):
seen it before this stockfish bunga fish, right, But I
wanted the origins of dry fish and how did it
come about into Nigeria. It was codfish, right that the
Norwegians brought to Niger during the civil war. They be
apt in civil war. They were dry and find a
way to get it to the evil people's suffering during

(33:46):
the civil war because the Nigerian garden had starved and
then you know, the first way of whenning a war
is cutting out supplies to food and shelter and everything.
So they had all that cut off to them. But
the Norwegians kind of wanted them to survive. And maybe
I say in Norwegians, but someone from Norway, maybe a
body on Angail. And I was just very interested in survival,

(34:10):
you know, and cod So I didn't even know when
I named a cod I didn't know codfish was a
huge thing like that. I just ready as part of
mine because I like to read a lot read, didn't draw,
And that's it, and that's how the names for the
characters were born. And after Summer is cool, I realized,

(34:34):
well I couldn't afford the tuition few, it's time to
move on, called a few friends and from there I
moved to Dallas. But you know, I'm saving other stories
and just jumping to hire, got and got to Dallas,
and that's how my migration led me to Dallas for work.

Speaker 2 (34:52):
I have a question for you. You said, just to
bring it to completion. You mentioned the word wahala, and
I've heard this word before. What does that mean?

Speaker 1 (35:01):
It means? It just means trouble. I mean trouble, you know,
like I don't wanta, I don't want trouble. So in
your mind you're always thinking, how do I how do
I not get caught up in trouble? You know, how
do I not get caught up in wahalla? That's what
that's a driver for most Nigerians. You know, let me

(35:24):
just save myself from trouble. Because we've seen trouble. We're
seeing real trouble. I always tell people when you say,
you know, when people say living on the streets in America,
there's one or two things. You know. You're either living
in a shelter or you just left your family. When
you say you're living on the streets. It's not the
same in Nigeria at all. It means you you have

(35:48):
mental issues, or you're that person or you know. So
I was looking at my life and when I say
to reduce the idea of getting to wil life the
way I saw things going, it's either my brother and
I could get ourselves on the path of survival or
we end up just on the strict It was just

(36:10):
a matter of time before, you know. We keep taking
our mom's money every month and we just get wed
three four months in death. He didn't have enough money
to pay the right and my dad was doing his
best in the North. He didn't move from the North because.

Speaker 2 (36:24):
He never moved from the North. He stayed there.

Speaker 1 (36:27):
He stayed there, but they both leave in America now.
But he never moved.

Speaker 2 (36:31):
But during that whole period of time, he was there
to watch the house.

Speaker 1 (36:34):
He's just there to watch the house. And remember he's
never lived in the South of West, so he didn't
know what he was going to do moving over. He
had his own personal business. He was an electrical engineer
who made gearboxes, you know, control unit to switch from
generator to regular power. So those type of businesses you
have an established line of fine tail. So moving to

(36:58):
the west or to the south, he didn't. He didn't
know anyone. It's like starting all over. I guess his
idea was to wait till the riot was over and
just see if we could just start. But things never
really things would come up a little bit and we'll
be able to get enough money to survive two months
out of the year. Then after that, because he would

(37:18):
send money to us every month. You know, but my
mom had three kids. Now that I have three kids,
it's not.

Speaker 2 (37:25):
You understand the struggle, the struggle.

Speaker 1 (37:29):
Why it wasn't enough, just enough money because you know,
three kids trying to grow, and my brother and I decided,
you know, to reduce the while I'll coming to us
in future. We just have to figure it out. We
have to figure out what we can do to get
ourselves out of the situation.

Speaker 2 (37:46):
You know. It's interesting. A couple of things that I'm
getting out of this. One is how this situation happens,
and it's a dispute that you're kind of at the
effect of. Your family became at the effective and as

(38:08):
a result of that, it changes the course of I'm
sure whatever plan your family had just in a moment
and change. Those are profound events to have experienced as
a young at any age, but as a young man,
as a young boy at the time, How did those

(38:33):
experiences inform do you think the man that you are today?

Speaker 1 (38:39):
So I stole in to so many friends and colleagues
and I said, it helped me build this personal university,
personal ideology of how to it's just how to reinvent yourself. Well,
I didn't have anything before, so there's no reinvention how
to create what you would like to see? But you

(39:00):
had something I didn't know I had something that was
the first Discovering what you had was the first you
were so speaking today's the first time realizing even making
logos and admissions for people. Now there was a small business.
So it was just a struggle thing that led me
to understand what I had. It was so I was thinking,

(39:24):
what if I didn't know how to draw, what would
this have been? Like?

Speaker 2 (39:29):
Well, you had a determination thing. Yeah, yeah, maybe it
was Maybe it was coming out of a struggle that
your family went through. Many people struggle many people have.
Maybe not that story, but there are many stories. But
there has to be something inside of you that would
take that would have you take those circumstances and translate

(39:54):
that him into buying minutes with your brother and having
lines of people, And that's determination.

Speaker 1 (40:02):
It's determination. I think it's farther than it's determination, but
I think determination is on the easy side. It was
just survival instinct because we'll just be out there. Remember
we didn't even figure out they don't let you in
that building where they sell the minute if you're not
a patron or if you're not a customer. So we

(40:24):
just hung out and it was out of I'm hungry,
you know, me and my brother would be there from
eight am. Now it's one pm. No food yet, all right,
what do we eat? Well, somebody uses their minutes bout
thirty minutes. They have five minutes left on it. We
get the ticket. Now you can get in the building.

(40:46):
What are you doing in here? You just rewrapped to then?
Oh yeah, get out of here. Well, I know we
have minutes. We have minutes. Let me very five minutes,
and there's something they doe. We have five minutes. Yeah,
we came to Browse yesterday. We have I mean, but
me and my brother not using the minutes. We're in
here to speak to people. You know, we just stand

(41:08):
behind people. You know, we see what are you doing? Oh,
we're trying to look for a logo that I need
to turn in. You know, affluent kids that were already
in university or business. Folks, I'm trying to do this project.
You're just tiring. I don't what do you need? I
need to write a thirty page document. I need to
put joint of agricultural producing this. I can do the

(41:29):
agricultural logo and my brother would do the type. Just
say how much is it? Like? Okay, give us two thousand.
I okay, what else do you need to We need minutes.
So it was this hustling, it was hunger. We didn't
even know what we're doing. As soon as they give
us the minutes and the money, you think we're starting

(41:50):
on the project. No, we let them leave the building.
We're going to somewhere called Bishop Arts Academy. It's a junction.
We go into your love Rice. That's the first you go,
get your love Rice and nice piece to go meet.
Then rest relax because we already know what we're gonna do.
This's is second nature. He doesn't have to think about typing.

(42:11):
I don't have to think about coming up with logo.
I just need time on the computer. I know what
I'm doing, or ice catch and stand it. I know
what I'm doing. So yes, it was determination, but it
was just hunger. I'll tell you, we're just hungry for
I'm not hunger for because people say hunger, you're hungry
about your goals and life. No, we're hungry for food.

(42:33):
For food, you know, belly. We needed food and we
needed to take something home to mom and help and say, Okay,
you're not the only one doing this, Mom, Look what
I made today, and now we can buy a little
bit of food to add to whatever will sustain us
to the end of the month when our salary comes in.
So yes, determination, but also just hunger as a human being.

Speaker 2 (42:55):
Let's talk about your art, Like, once you actually got
here and started and got to the point of creating art,
was that just kind of the natural progression of things
for you, did you think about doing other things?

Speaker 1 (43:10):
So I want to get to a point in life
where I do the things that give me joy. And
I've been working for hustling to get some sort of
thing that I'll get my bills paid since I was
fifteen fourteen so as much as that gives you joy,

(43:30):
that's not the kind of joy we're talking about here.
We're talking about you just see a mark of yourself
doing something that you feel like doing, which was painting.
I was so sad when I put in a forced
cat and graduate as cat because I thought I won't
be an artist anymore. You know, when I moved to Dallas,
there was an art community, but you know how the
art community is, you have to earn your way in there.

(43:53):
You just don't go marching. Oh, you go to school
and you meet friends. You know, you meet professors will
critique you and find a parking side of you. For me,
there was none of that. So when I moved to Dallas,
and after years and years and years, because it wasn't
until funny because I for me to my pathway into

(44:15):
the art was even different. So five six years in
dallast I just made artworks and put it on T shirt.
And my very wonderful friend Emmanuel Eban, who would go together,
we'll just go look for where they were famous people
and try to give them my T shirt. But selling
shirt was not my goal because at some point it
was making some money. And I told my friend this
is not what because I have stories. I wish I

(44:39):
was a musician or a poet, because I can just
narrate the situationship because I was not the only one.
Still till today, I'm not the only one going through
this as a niger is. Nigeria has two hundred and
thirty million people. I can easily telly thirty million people
are going through this today.

Speaker 2 (44:57):
What's this? What's the this that the thirty million million Nigerians.

Speaker 1 (45:01):
Are going through, just hustling, trying to find a better life,
trying to get out of this riot happens, issues happens
to family that displaces them every day in Nigeria. And
because you know, life is not there to babysit, nobody cares.
But if you find someone out there who's been through

(45:21):
the same situation, or you find an artwork that is narrating,
it's like reading a book and you read a book
of how some Disney became Disney, you know, slipping outside
and play, you know, it's possible for you. And my
goal is to narrate just every tiny snippet of my situation.
By the end of my life, when I'm on a
hundred years old, I want to have taken every snippet

(45:43):
of my life into an echo of painting. And that's
what my goal is. And if you stumble on it,
one part of it might just work for what you're
looking for. You know, it might just represent a timeline
in the experience you've had me stumbling on That was
my goal. That was what I was looking for career.

(46:05):
And when I finally told my friend I'm not doing
two shirts anymore, that was in twenty seventeen or eighteen.
I want to figure out how to be an artist,
a real artist, and you know, started applying to brands
because I started, I did my own show, just reached
out to some lady here in Dallas, Amber la France,
and said, I want to do a show. You know,
I want to deal it, I want to rent it,

(46:26):
I want to put my artwork out that one. If
people came, it was just out of that ship, hostile.
And you know, I'm not someone who was born here
and I didn't grow up here. I didn't even graduate
art school. I graduated. I ended up graduating in engineering
and not art. So it wasn't like I had friends
in the art who said this is how to set

(46:48):
up a gallery show or this is how to approach it.
I didn't even know there was a method to approaching gallery.
I had to learn that there was a method to
speaking to curators. There's a method. There's a whole way
the art institution works, you know. I had to learn
that myself. One thing I love myself about is that
if I'm interested in it, I'll sit up all that
then just read about it. So we did the first

(47:10):
show and people noticed. You know, That's what I love
America for. People will notice what you have, they come then.
I in twenty twenty, during the pandemic, I applied for
a grant with the City of Dallas and they gave
us this grant right before the pandemic kicked in. I
have planned to confer the house in Bounton. It's feeling

(47:31):
out into an installation. Just have it work, and it's
going to be open for ninety seven, ninety six hours straight.
You know. It's not on this so it's on the
gentrified side of town. So people kids who have never
been to a museum galleries can walk into this building
and see what an artwork. That was just my goal.

(47:52):
Because of the pandemic, everybody show was getting shut down.
I mean, this is my first time applying for permit.
I didn't even know I was a contractor for the
city point. So they're like, okay, that's a contractor. Your
show might get shut down, and I mean, think about it.
I spent everything. Our show was one of the only
few that wasn't shutdown. We're able to do the show,
and that was I was happy because at two am,

(48:15):
I had to get a security guard to a people
who walk in, you know, people who work all the hours,
who don't know what gathered the artists, they'll walk in.
But what I found profound was that my situation was
very similar to those people walking in. When I tell
them my stories, they could relate. You know, some people
tell you I moved here from Katrina. You wouldn't believe

(48:38):
this is what we used to live like in New Orleans.
After I said, are you serious, they'll show me pictures
of the houses. You know, what do you do now?
I've been in and out of jail four times? What
do you think I can do? You know? And I
was happy because the other side of life, if you've

(48:59):
not seen it, it's it's you can't imagine it. I'm
sorry And for those on that side. If they don't
have a mirror, a touchable, I don't know how to
explain it. If you don't have somebody you can meet
that says I have been through that situation what you're

(49:21):
talking about, and this is what I did to get
out of it, then it probably won't work because I
still have friends in Niger when we were in that
same situation and you know, it's still struggling. So me
putting up that show was it was for me to
put in a community where people can't see that there's
a pathway out. And since then, you know, been getting

(49:45):
shown here and there and put them out. But the
goal for my practice it's not just show. And that's
why cutting the boat for confidence Conel was important. Life
is spontaneous. It's very spontaneous, and the ability to take
whatever it throws at me, at you and convert it

(50:06):
into not just lemonade, because lemonade is just I mean,
you can survive on a lemonade forever. Right. Life is
going to keep giving your lemons, so you have to
decide how it's going to feed you for breakfast, launch
and dinner. So you have to convert lemon lemons into
bread for breakfast chicken thighs for lunch, was on here

(50:28):
for dinner. That is hard, that is complex, But for me,
I wouldn't say that is hard because it's just being
a lifestyle. It's been a marker and that's what my
practice is all about. It's about just taking one side
of my life converting it into what I see daily.

(50:48):
You know this, they come back to me flashes of dreams.
You know, you see beautiful college in your dream of
what you were hoping for. But again you see a
house burning and you speak trying to run out of
it with a box teap that's the only thing they
can get out that they will, the mattress thing. That's
why you just want to paint that bit.

Speaker 2 (51:20):
Let's talk about that boat project, because again, when Billy
came back to the team to talk about it, it
seemed to be such a profound experience that I hope
to be able to witness at some point, and talking
to you about your journey, it seems to be a

(51:41):
real metaphor in some ways for not just your experience,
but the experience of so many people. Boat you know
is is so symbolic of things. What inspired the idea?
And can you give us kind of a high level,
not getting into all the details, but just a little
bit about what is the boat project so and why

(52:03):
is it important?

Speaker 1 (52:04):
As a Yorba Nigerian, there's always this corner of your
mind that tells you everything you do has to be important.
So there's a parable that says a way less general
like proverbs are the guide rails. If I'm fanslating this problem,

(52:26):
proverbs are the guide rails of the words you choose
to do to speak. I felt like an important work
is the guide rail for someone who has an important show.
Confidence Come might not sound big to people, but me
as a person imagining what confidence Come will become, not
camp will become. I just felt it needed a spontaneous artwork.

(52:50):
The proposition was to have painting for guests to just
have the canvas and become paint but I wanted something
where they're able to not just they're able to witness
scary on one side, but confidence on the other side,
and combine. It's a combination of life, just life as

(53:15):
an artwork, you know. And I told them, I said,
we can't do depending on the canvas anymore. I need
a boat because it refers to the journey you know,
a voyage of you taking yourself from one point and
delivering yourself to another point in future you haven't seen.
You can only imagine this point, but you haven't seen it.

(53:35):
But why not use a car or a flight. They're faster,
But the boat is how life is. Life is very slow.
I mean, hold your birth in two minutes. So it's
a voyage of people get on the boat and get
off my boat. You know, It's just it's terrible for
so many things. It's a terrible for the journey that
people are supposed to take coming too complex. Confidence can
keep saying complex card that's another one I did, But

(53:58):
it's supposed to represent the journey they're gonna embark on.
But another thing was that for me to do that,
I've never literally bought a vote before I leave in Dallas,
I needed a boat in LA That's one. I've never
used a chainsaw before. I don't even know if the
space would let us do that. But that's part of

(54:19):
the artwork. Just confront my own confidence for the artwork,
because I called myself a performance after a storialist artist
as well. Most performance artists, they they dare the unknown,
which is the unknown for me, and I wanted to
see people. I want people to see me do it
in real life, you know, attack or confront the unknown,

(54:43):
you know. And it was the whole project trying to
get a boat bought. We didn't even know we get
a boat until a day before now and I'm here.
You know. We had to get the boat delivered from
one part of California to LA and you know, in
the busy traffic. That's another way to approach it. So

(55:04):
all that for me was the art practice in itself.
It was the artwork in itself, the whole process. Then
get in there, then cutting the boat in front of
people and telling them you're come into confident complex cons
coverdens con and you want to confront yourself and say,
I want to, you know, confront my confidence. I want

(55:24):
to do what I'm capable of doing. Well. For starters,
this is what I'm capable of doing. I'll cut this boat.
You know, you paint where you see yourself in the
future and just hanging somewhere in your house and if
a lot gets worse, because those are the things I
never had. I never had something to reflect on. Let's

(55:45):
say keep going, you make it, or this is a
covenant or a promise to myself, a promise ory note
to myself. And that's what I just wanted to do
with that artwork.

Speaker 2 (55:55):
When you think about, because you spoke about the people
who never got out of that situation back in Nigeria,
or just people that you've encountered in your life. When
you think about I'll ask you two ways. When you
think about the next generation, right, what is it that

(56:17):
you would like for them to take from or be
inspired by about your journey?

Speaker 1 (56:27):
I think the abilities we have is an infinite rubber band,
an infinite elastic rubber band. And don't be afraid to
stretch it. I mean stretch the living daylight out of it.
When you stretch it, this star categorizing and stretches. Because
you can also stretch some more and stretch well, guess what,

(56:50):
once it breaks, you can tie it and keep stretching again.
That's what I've learned. So if someone was able to say,
I mean all this new motivations and motivational speakers, and
I didn't have all that, these are blessings to people.
Now take it not just as a fancy at all,

(57:10):
Use it as a firepath in your back and just
tell yourself. What can I do with just this new
one I've received, you know, and with that whatever you
put your mind to. Unlike other people that I'll say
you can do it, you cannot do it because you

(57:31):
don't know what you're doing. You have to chart it out,
read about how to do it from the beginning to end. Now,
go meet people or put yourself in spaces where you
can meet people who have done it before, are able
to do it. I have a way. I see myself
as an artist. I spoke with my friend Nicole, and

(57:51):
I said, as an art I'm not an artist who
was rushing to get glorification or you know, to get
into different shows. Because I have a very broad range
of what I'm trying to do with my practice. So
it's going to be very, very very slow. It's going
to mature slowly because when I look into the process,
it wasn't easy for any of them. None of them

(58:11):
had to hand it out to them, especially for a
person likely. So if you see yourself as someone who
have no mentors, no references, so the way to do
is think of it is as a hard chore. It's
a project for me to undertake. But the freedom is
that it's an elastic rub band. You can retry, you

(58:33):
can take your time, you can design how you want
to move it, and once you start seeing progress, then
it's working. Then add more to it. But here's the
fun part of what I'll add to it. Make your
vision and your goal as big as you want, as huge.
I mean, that's what I started doing. So when it

(58:54):
told me, come people pint on canvas, I said no, no, no, no, no,
tell them not to buy it. Emphasis we're buying a boat.
I don't know how to buy a boat. So I
don't know how to buy whatever. But if you can
tackle that huge project, guess what, it's now small, the
next one is big. So what I'll tell them is

(59:16):
know that life is not easy. It's not going to
be easy, but it allows for you to stretch. There's
a freedom of stretch and you can always try. You
have one hour, so we have three hundred days, three
sixty five days to retry if you feel But because
of what you have, make your goal. Because once your
goal succeeds, you want to you want to cover the sky,

(59:39):
you want to boom. You want to be the biggest
sunflower anyone has ever seen. So don't spend all your
time focusing on a very small goal. I mean, create
the Oprah Winfrey Network plus CNA be the biggest, the
design the huge. I mean, I'm not going to tell
in the code. The first idea I had for confidence

(01:00:01):
come because I just want. I always want the biggest ideas.
And once you write down the ideas, you've designed the ideas.
It's not easy, but you take the first step. You
solve the first part. What was the first problem, Okay,
we knock it out. Now let's go on the second.
And that's what art does for me. I mean, I
didn't know about canvas diractioning. I didn't even know we painted,

(01:00:25):
so we prepared the surface of black canvas. In Nigeria,
the oneside sense of cat were blue and water, and
I was only able to afford three collars, yellow, blue,
and green. Now black came from charcoal. No, not typical
chocolate you buy is the charcoal from There's something called
akara in Nigeria is bean's cake. They sell it on
the side of the road. So once the lady is

(01:00:46):
done cooking, you go gather all the charcoal esies, you
pound it. Then you add water, we add blue, you
add egg, to it, and that's your black. You want
a lighter, you go to house painters. Once they don't
painting the house to take and you know that's the
first step, and that's how I got my paints. Is
ready for scats. So it's like you again, life just

(01:01:10):
allows your freedom to to stretch you try. It's it's
a situationship. That's what I'll tell some people. It's a situation.
No amount of advice or mentorship can but just tell yourself.

(01:01:31):
I'll be ready when the situation happens, and I'll give
it all I can to figure what the problem is out.
I won't give up.

Speaker 2 (01:01:39):
You know what I get out of what you're saying
because I think about what you're saying, and I think
about my father, who also came to this country as
a very young man, who came to this Gerard Basque
as his name. But my father came here in December.
I'm looking at a photo of him right now with

(01:02:01):
a big old smile on his face. But he came
to this country in December, and as he put it,
with a toothbrush in his pocket, right and he got
his family to allow him and to support him to
get here. And then once he got here. He was
on his own, and he came from a tropical place,

(01:02:24):
from Haiti, and he had no preparation.

Speaker 1 (01:02:30):
For the cold, harsh cold of New York.

Speaker 2 (01:02:33):
The harsh cold of New York, and his first job
was pushing a garment racked down the street. And he
talked about when he shared the story with his three
children years later, he talked about how cold it was,
and that it was so cold that the first coat
that he had was a woman's coat. He didn't even know,

(01:02:53):
he didn't care.

Speaker 1 (01:02:54):
He was cold. Wow.

Speaker 2 (01:02:58):
My father from Haiti, I decided he had seen some
businessmen import a prince, and he said that he was
going to be an American businessman. My brother Jean Michel
Basquia said he was going to be the greatest painter
of all time. You just shared your ability to envision something.

(01:03:29):
And what I got from what you said was that
your vision is the canvas. The vision is the canvas,
whether it's a canvas canvas, whether it's a boat, whether
it's the life you're going to create for yourself, the

(01:03:50):
family that you choose to create. Whatever the vision is
that is your canvas. Dream big and then fill in
the blame that's your blank canvas. The vision is your
blank canvas. Then come and fill in the blanks because
you'll learn whether you're staying up all night reading, whether

(01:04:10):
you're asking questions, whether you're making sure that you meet
the right people. That's how you fill in the blanks
to create this piece of art that is the fulfillment
or completion of your vision. That's what I got from
what you shared, and I think that's beautiful inspiration.

Speaker 1 (01:04:30):
Thank you.

Speaker 2 (01:04:31):
How do you measure success today?

Speaker 1 (01:04:35):
It's one step after the other. You know, how you
walking into one step in front. If I can successfully
put the next step in front, then that's it. I mean,
I'm not looking for a huge reward after I complete

(01:04:56):
something because I mean after I've just been able to
situate myself and have a regular life that is outside
of what I used to live in after the riot.
Everything is a bonus, so I'm not beating myself up

(01:05:19):
to me. I don't like looking back and oh, because
success has been for people, this is not success. They
want to jet they want different things. For me, conquering
that in itself is the success I've wished for. Everything
is just bonus points. So if I'm able to take

(01:05:39):
one step after the next, different, healthy the next day,
that's success, that's just it. If my kids are doing well,
that's success. Fortunately or unfortunately, the thing that would have
been a successful thing has been conquered earlier in life.
You know. If I was to conquer this later in
the future, then that would be my goal. That will

(01:06:01):
be my measurement of success getting out of this situation, though,
But I think I've done that, and I just it's
not like I'm on the score or anything coming my way.
It's just I don't beat myself too much over getting
a successful outcome of it. And that's just how I
measure success.

Speaker 2 (01:06:21):
Jeremiah only five.

Speaker 1 (01:06:25):
Day, Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:06:27):
How can we support you?

Speaker 1 (01:06:30):
Just tell people about my artwork. I want to get
into spaces so I can get out all these dreams
and ideas I have, you know, that's it. Tell people
about me, that's well, maybe not about me or my
artwork at least, and if people are interested in seeing,
they don't have to. If they're interested, I'm available, I'll

(01:06:50):
show and those some new stuff, you know, new things,
new ideas will spark up. It's just and that's the
best way to.

Speaker 2 (01:06:59):
Support excellent and my last question is if there was
one thing, having created the boat, the journey for yourself,
if there was one thing that you could say to
the young boy who was at the store by minutes,

(01:07:21):
what would you say.

Speaker 1 (01:07:24):
I'd say, you've discovered what other people's people couldn't discover,
because everybody at thirteen fourteen are not looking to great entrepreneurship.
They're looking to being a comfort of their house, eating

(01:07:45):
dinner that mom has made. So if you find yourself
in that situation, congratulations, You've you've been able to find
something people don't want to do won't be able to find,
and it's going to give you your tenacity. It's going to
give you the the strength to face life in itself.
Thank you, no, thank you, thank you for I mean,

(01:08:08):
I'm here on the Sun's Sun Basket show, so we
can tell just keep going. So it's just one leg
after the next, one after the next, and you know,
thanks so much for having me. That's really wonderful.

Speaker 2 (01:08:22):
You're welcome. This has been an incredible conversation. I appreciate
it so much.

Speaker 1 (01:08:26):
Thank you, thank you,