hRo

hRo was born in Atlanta, GA and spent his youth building objects out of lego blocks, locking himself up in his room to develop his dancing skills, and drawing flattering portraits for his friends. Though he was barred from playing with lego because he had a habit of swallowing the blocks, but he continued to dance, draw and build objects. After studying architecture at Wentworth Institute of Technology for two years, he transferred to Massachusetts College of Art, because, in his words “I realized that what I really wanted to pursue was art instead architecture. I chose the S.I.M. Department (Studio for Interrelating Media) because I like to experiment with different media and interrelate them together in new ways. At SIM I studied different types of crafts, such as cold glass working, sculpting, photography, film and video editing, and painting. I love working with glass, because glass represents the feminine to me…I found it to be a sensual, fragile and hard to work with medium. I also wanted to push the boundaries of traditional graffiti by using a 3D representation of the letters to make it pop out of the normally flat surface. As an African American artist, I feel I’m in a unique position; there are not too many successful and well-known African-American painters, and I often feel pressured to fit into a pigeon hole of what others imagine a black artist to be. One of my biggest inspirations is Urban Hip Hop culture. Beside the musical aspects, Hip Hop has a number of components, such as b-boying (break-dancing) and graffiti. I am one of the dancers in our theatrical multimedia production entitled the “Floorlore: The History of Hip Hop,” which has been performed at various universities and theatres all across the nation. In 2004, the Floorlords established “The Floorlords Movement”, a non-profit organization dedicated to teaching and empowering at-risk inner city youth through Hip Hop. Working with troubled youth, and seeing the lack of guidance, love, and care in their lives, I became more attentive to this dilemma and decided to became a mentor. I feel that there are not enough African-American artists or dance performers out there to provide as a role model for the youth in my community, so I want to inspire and show them that it is possible to make it as an artist.”