In the fall of 2016, I decided to pay my hometown Portland, OR a visit for a b-boy battle. My close friend Ryan Bush reached out to see if I would be interested in doing some filming. He wanted to peek behind the curtain of breaking culture for he hadn’t experienced it before. Of course, I was honored and invited him along for the weekend. He shadowed me around town, filming every little detail of the experience. We also conducted a short interview where I nervously stumbled over my words to tell my story about how I became a b-boy and what it has done for me as a person. After this trip, I returned home and didn’t hear back about the project. 

In February of this year, I was deep into my thesis work at MICA where I’ve been creating a body of work around breaking culture. It was at this time that I received an email from Ryan saying he had something to share with me. To my surprise, he sent me this long-lost footage I nearly forgot about. What Ryan came up with was beautiful. He claimed it wasn’t his idea of perfect and that he had made countless iterations but never felt right about its release.

That was until he saw what I was doing with my design practice and the work I've been making for my thesis. What didn’t serve an immediate purpose at the time became a very meaningful story about how I ended up where I’m at. We decided that we would share the video at my thesis art opening which was sadly canceled due to the COVID-19. Although it never found its way to my show, I'm proud to finally release what I've titled “Always a B-boy”, a film by Ryan J. Bush. Ryan said it best, “this video is a time capsule for both of us; a marker of our developing skills as creative people and a reminder of our humble beginnings.”