92 I was in New York at Parson’s, a new school for social research, Parsons School of Design, and the teacher mentioned that there’s this job available at this gallery, and I thought oh, that’s great, I’d love to work in a gallery. I didn’t know anything about which gallery it was and what level of caliber, and it turned out it was a very good gallery at the time, Max Protetch, and they hired me as a kind of a reception — not receptionist, I was like an assistant who did — I organized the slides and did — answered the phone sometimes. ((Dreaming To Become Chinese))

And I started to understand that contemporary artists were not only alive and working, but they were all over New York. It wasn’t just a handful. It’s a ton of galleries, there are so many different types of art, so many people — it’s a thriving world of artists. ((Community Of Interests, Love The City, Where They Can Go And Dream)) And then I started to look more into the kinds of art that I preferred and I enjoyed. And eventually as time went on, I actually worked for quite a few of these artists. ((Old Tattoo Artists)) So, that also allowed me to understand that oh, I can actually have a studio, run a studio one day, and maybe even have an assistant, it’s happening. People are existing in a very normal, interesting way in this culture, in this society, as artists, contributing, not starving, not downtrodden and marginal, but experiencing everything that the city has to offer, and giving back to it.

So, it was important, it was very wonderful to work with different people and to feel out the landscape in order for me to actually believe how possible it was for me to actually do this too.