RAC is excited to partner with Humans of St. Louis to highlight stories from some of the talented creatives and artists who call St. Louis home. All stories and photography in the RAC + Humans of St. Louis series were created by and are credited to Lindy Drew, co-founder, lead storyteller, and book co-author of Humans of St. Louis. 

Kyla Kikkawa

Photo credit: Lindy Drew / Humans of St. Louis

“I thought I was going to study dance and movement in relation to neurological and neurodegenerative diseases. When I was 13 years old, my grandma was diagnosed with Parkinson’s. She’s still alive at 98, which is wild because she had an operation that relieved her cerebral spinal fluid, and it really helped. Now, when I go back home to California, I still dance with her. I try to take her to classes, too.

I came to St. Louis because there was a program at Washington University that was like, ‘We’re interested in allowing exploration of the intersection between multiple disciplines to solve greater problems. Basically, not limiting a problem to a single discipline.’ I thought, ‘This is right up my alley. They study this here? That’s what I want to do.’ After freshman year, I was going to finally jump into that work over the summer, but the pandemic happened. Then everything was online. As a sophomore, I had one in-person class per semester. I ended up taking an anthropology class called Music, Sound, and the Body with Esther Viola Kurtz, a professor who does research about capoeira. That’s how I found myself doing a research project that introduced me to KRUMP.

I had met Krumpers at the WashU underpass, which they called the tunnel spot, where students paint murals for their organizations and hang out. I don’t even know what happened, but I somehow blacked out and hopped in the cypher. Afterwards, they were like, ‘We’ll add you to our Facebook page.’ I’d been interested in this dance style for a long time. So I ended up reaching out to the admins, like, ‘I’m interested in learning. I’ll pay for lessons.’ Since then, one of them has been my big homie, my mentor.

I began interviewing dancers about the background of the KRUMP community here in St. Louis while also trying to incorporate this dance style into my own dance framework. So I mixed things together, got into my body in terms of expression and comfort level, and my center of gravity became krumping to R&B music and to KRUMP tracks, because that also has its own genre of music. I took lessons with Tyrus Watson, a.k.a. SmallTalk, a.k.a. X/O. Over time, he gave me the name Princezz. So now I’m also known as Princezz X/O. I’ve been in the KRUMP community ever since, and it’s been my first real community in St. Louis.”

Photo credit: Lindy Drew / Humans of St. Louis

“I was always drawn to KRUMP. I just didn’t know if I could do it. Luckily, my mentors and the Midwest KRUMP community have shown me a lot of love over the years. Some have been dancing this style for a long time, and I’m super biased, but everybody’s incredibly creative. That said, they’re also a goofy group of people. KRUMP is an acronym that stands for Kingdom Radically Uplifted Mighty Praise. It really highlights the roots in praise dance and the connection to spirituality. Oftentimes, people will say they know the word or what’s being done when it’s danced. But they’ll connect it to the action of getting crunk.

Historically, the style’s pretty new, having only been around for about 25 years. And in St. Louis, the movement started around 2008-ish. Seeing the Krumpers in the club is my favorite. It doesn’t happen often, but when it does, it brings me so much joy. Especially when the whole cypher is doing the same thing.

I’ve been thinking about what my next steps are as an artist, and I’m interested in exploring the cypher and concentric circles across different cultures. The cypher was originally coined as a manifestation of Hip Hop, a space of possibility where freestyle would manifest, whether it’s rapping, dancing, or just expression in relation to the music’s beat. So, we cypher in KRUMP. And when all the energy is facing in, a lot of attention and energy can accumulate in that space. When we’re in that orientation, we’re all watching somebody dance, we’re feeling them, and we pick up quickly on what they’re doing. So if they do a move once, we’ll be there the next two times it happens. In KRUMP, there’s also a thing where anything done three times or repetitively is called a bang. So sometimes that’ll happen. But, overall, there are certain moves where, when the energy is high enough, the repetition is powerful.”

Photo credit: Lindy Drew / Humans of St. Louis

“None of my time in college was ever linear, and I had this traumatic experience within my first three weeks there, but I didn’t psychologically feel the fallout until over a year after the event. I was trying to push through whatever was happening, not really connecting with anyone. I found myself just running and continuing to run. I was doing dance, a cappella, and musical theater, staying busy by taking classes across multiple schools. Then the pandemic made me stop. Even though my mind took some time to catch up, that’s when I started to feel the impact of what happened to me in my body.

I was in physical therapy for 10 months. Then I was having psychological symptoms of trauma, which I was dealing with in my sophomore year and beyond. There were times I felt like I was just surviving. And, honestly, KRUMP saved my life from where I was. I was trying to learn different ways of feeling music, and being in touch with and feeling autonomy over my body. I wanted to use dance to express myself to the fullest extent. And all of this coincided with me also learning KRUMP.

The community knew I was showing up for a reason, but they were never like, ‘Oh, you got something going on.’ Their response was just affirming. I’m a small Asian female from California who had never Krumped before, which is ironic because it started in LA, and I grew up in LA County. But the dancers never questioned me or what I was going through. They mostly saw that I was eager to learn. I felt like I didn’t necessarily get the help I needed in other places. And instead of feeling like I had to explain to myself what was going on with me, I danced. I took a lot of pride in watching how the Krumpers expressed themselves and evolved in their styles. And I came to learn that they moved energy through space to connect to the past, the future, and with their ancestors.”

Photo credit: Lindy Drew / Humans of St. Louis

“In LA, the KRUMP community always tells me I’m welcome there, which is lovely. When I first went to visit, they were wondering, ‘Where did you learn to KRUMP?’ I’d tell them, ‘The Midwest. St. Louis, Missouri!’ To which they’d ask, ‘People do that there?’ It’s international now, which is beautiful because I studied abroad during my junior year and focused a lot on dancing. I took two dance courses. One was an introduction to somatic studies, and the other was a class I took in Chile. For the latter, we had a reggaeton unit, a dance hall unit, a hip hop unit, and we danced to house. That was the vibes. Our profe, our teacher, was also getting a master’s in education with an emphasis on neuroscience. I was like, ‘Cool!’ I recently found a video of me talking for like an hour in Spanish, trying to explain something or another. All this time during my education, I really tried to go from depression to long-term potentiation and bigger systems change in my brain. It was a lot. Then I realized I couldn’t do what I was trying to work through, especially in another language. Still, people listened, which was a beautiful thing, too.”

Photo credit: Lindy Drew / Humans of St. Louis

𝐻𝑜𝑤 𝑑𝑖𝑑 𝐾𝑅𝑈𝑀𝑃 ℎ𝑒𝑙𝑝 𝑦𝑜𝑢 ℎ𝑒𝑎𝑙?

“I identify as a fourth-generation Japanese American. My family experienced World War II in the U.S. and Japan. And there was a lot that wasn’t always talked about. So I feel like I’ve inherited a lot of blockages in terms of expression as it relates to my lineage and even my experiences. As a result, when I was going through some tough times and feeling uncomfortable talking about things, KRUMP was helpful in not needing to have words. KRUMP is a lot more linguistic than other dance styles. There are basic steps and other components, but we can immediately move to show different forms of expression, such as using our hands as language. On top of that, our hand movements are used to talk. In KRUMP, you can have so many conversations within the framework, and the nature of how physical it is, down to our hands. A conversation is happening. There are interactions back and forth. Maybe there’s a call and response. And there’s a lot of interacting with the self, with people around you, and with a greater spirit to say what you need to say. All the while, you’re building sentences through what you’re doing.

The hand movements mean different things, and where you are in space means different things. Sometimes when someone’s dancing, and people say, ‘I hear you,’ it’s not because someone’s talking out loud like with spoken word or rap, yet they’re still communicating. There’s so much seeing, feeling, and connecting in KRUMP. Especially when dancers really need to meet up, get something off their chest, and cipher. They could talk later about what’s going on inside of them if they wanted to. But Krumping is more about being able to have a space held for them to release whatever they don’t feel comfortable talking about. And, yeah, to do all this in a way where people hear what you’re saying without saying any words is wild to me.”

Photo credit: Lindy Drew / Humans of St. Louis

𝑊𝑜𝑤! 𝑀𝑦 𝑤ℎ𝑜𝑙𝑒 𝑝𝑟𝑜𝑗𝑒𝑐𝑡 𝑖𝑠 𝑙𝑖𝑠𝑡𝑒𝑛𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑡𝑜 𝑝𝑒𝑜𝑝𝑙𝑒 𝑡𝑎𝑙𝑘. 𝐴𝑛𝑑 𝑦𝑜𝑢’𝑟𝑒 𝑙𝑖𝑘𝑒, “𝑊𝑒 𝑗𝑢𝑠𝑡 𝑑𝑎𝑛𝑐𝑒 𝑖𝑡 𝑜𝑢𝑡.”

“Yeah! And sometimes that’s where the KRUMP world and the dance world actually run into issues because people are talking too much. The world’s problems can’t be solved through dance battles. But a lot of things can be because it offers a space for conversation, release, and improvement. And it can do a lot of healing. Cyphering with others, moving energy in space, learning from each other, and pushing each other definitely makes me feel this overwhelming sigh of relief.”

Photo credit: Lindy Drew / Humans of St. Louis

𝑊ℎ𝑒𝑛 𝑒𝑙𝑠𝑒 𝑖𝑛 𝑦𝑜𝑢𝑟 𝑙𝑖𝑓𝑒 𝑑𝑜 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑓𝑒𝑒𝑙 𝑙𝑖𝑘𝑒 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑑𝑜 𝑤ℎ𝑒𝑛 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑑𝑎𝑛𝑐𝑒?

“I feel it when I meet with people who are wiser and older than me. And when they can reflect things back to me in our verbal or written conversation. I especially feel it when I can ask them questions they haven’t thought about before. I like to ask random questions. When I can make somebody think differently about what they regularly talk about, I feel very seen and proud of myself. I identify as neurodivergent, so sometimes social cues and I will fight with each other. Sometimes I’ll dive into asking questions too deep, too fast. But usually, people are receptive to it. I have a notebook I bring around with me, and I’ll ask people things like, ‘What shape is time?’ That’s just me doing some qualitative people research, you know?”

Photo credit: Lindy Drew / Humans of St. Louis

“Having random conversations in Spanish, I’ll tell people, ‘I only speak English and Spanish,’ and they’re always so confused. They’ll say, ‘But you don’t look like you do.’ And I’ll reply, ‘Yes.’

I love Latin America. My first trip to Latin America was to Nicaragua. My high school had a relationship with a sister school there, and I was supposed to go back, but the country had a political uprising. So when I studied dance at WashU, I was also studying Spanish and did a study abroad in Santiago de Chile. And while I was there, I scoured Chile for the Krumpers. I finally found them near the tail end of my trip. There was at least one KRUMP family somebody was building, so it was very new. But I got to meet up with them outside a metro station and session with them. Even though their community is smaller than in other places, connecting with them was so special. I’d been searching for months, and I ended up hitting up the leader — the big homie, the mentor of the fam — on Instagram. I was like, ‘Hey! I’m from the U.S., and I’ve been looking for y’all.’ At first, I asked one of my dance teachers, but she didn’t know anybody. As I got more comfortable speaking Spanish, I kept asking around until someone told me, ‘Oh, I’ve seen this one guy.’ What was really cool was that when I met up with him, he asked, ‘So how do my littles look compared to dancers in the U.S.?’ It’s great to still follow them and watch their progress.”

Photo credit: Lindy Drew / Humans of St. Louis

𝑊𝑎𝑠 𝑖𝑡 ℎ𝑒𝑙𝑝𝑓𝑢𝑙 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑑𝑢𝑟𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑐𝑜𝑙𝑙𝑒𝑔𝑒 𝑡𝑜 𝑡𝑎𝑘𝑒 𝑡𝑖𝑚𝑒 𝑜𝑓𝑓 𝑓𝑟𝑜𝑚 𝑆𝑡. 𝐿𝑜𝑢𝑖𝑠 𝑡𝑜 𝑙𝑖𝑣𝑒 𝑎𝑏𝑟𝑜𝑎𝑑?

“Yes, I needed to get away from the WashU bubble. I needed time away to process things, figure out how to be more in my body, live in the present, and appreciate new experiences. Actually, I was processing in Spanish for a lot of the time. And Chilean Spanish is so unique, too. I did do some dancing, mostly at the university, which was beautiful because they gave me the Mejor Compañera award, which translates to the Best Classmate. Then, when I came back to St. Louis to finish college, I think I had a bit of reverse culture shock. St. Louis cracks me up because if people don’t know you here or what your intentions are, there can be a hesitancy to connect. Then, once you mention something or somebody you have in common, there can be a lot of excitement, immediate trust, and comfort. That was actually quite similar to what I experienced in Chile.”

Photo credit: Lindy Drew / Humans of St. Louis

“I mentioned how I take a lot of pride in bringing up moments that hadn’t happened before with people who are wiser or older than me. Well, while I was in Chile, the coordinator for my exchange program had lived in the U.S. for some time and was giving a tour at a former detention center. And during the tour, he revealed to us that he was actually detained during the Chilean dictatorship at that site. I was interested in talking to him more, so we got coffee soon after. And I asked him, ‘What does dignity mean to you? Or, what is your definition of dignity?’ And he gave me an answer.

Later that night, he emailed me: ‘This question has been circling in my head. I gave you an answer, but I need to add another part.’ So he explained how dignity relates to one’s own physical circumstances. Then he added that it also pertains to how one perceives what their abilities and resources are, especially considering their lived reality of what’s possible. I felt so honored to spend time with him and then to hear back. How special that he wrote to say, ‘Thank you for helping me think in a new way.’ That was one of the proudest moments of my life. Because, for me, I came to understand that healing from intergenerational trauma is a global thing and that my silly questions may hold the power to inspire new perspectives about humanity.

There’s so much untangling that needs to be done throughout all of our lineages and, in particular, for minority communities in the U.S. Being Japanese American, I’m not always able to untangle all of that for myself. I dream about what it would be like to globally redefine what we consider to be humanity. And that might seem idealistic or far-fetched. But my small version of practicing that was kind of by asking this man that question. As somebody who was detained during a dictatorship, who saw some crazy things and then went on to retell them to people at the actual site where it happened, I was so curious to know more from him. That I could even open up a mind like his when he already had to open up his mind so much, and heal to the point of being able to publicly share his memories for the betterment of understanding the past so we can go into the future, that was impactful for me.”

Photo credit: Lindy Drew / Humans of St. Louis

“I’m grateful to be able to look back at certain things in my family history and know that those things were true; they were factual. It’s not always the case that people can look back in their family’s history and say, ‘This is what I know is true.’ I know I’m Japanese American. I know I’m fourth-generation. And I know because I’ve had family around to tell me that, and family who were interested in documenting that.

My grandparents were all born in the United States. Two of them were interned during World War II, and two of them moved back to Japan and were stuck there during the war, even though they were American. Experiencing World War II as an American-born Japanese person was not great in either country. And for my grandparents in Japan, in particular, there was a lot they didn’t talk about. I had family members who were in the city when the A-bomb dropped and passed away from the impact of that. And my grandma and her sibling saw the plane before it dropped the bomb. That time in history feels so far away. Yet, I have somebody I’m very close to who witnessed that, felt the impact of it, lost a family member to it, and still struggles as a result. So I think a lot about the impact of intergenerational trauma in my family as it relates to nuclear warfare, citizenship, erasure, and loss. Being American and being in a Japanese military school, along with familial trauma experienced from nuclear warfare, the topic is delicate. I’ve seen the desire not to talk about it because it was complicated and complex as it relates to citizenship and coming back to the U.S. and making a family here.

I’ll explain to people, ‘I don’t speak Japanese because we lost that language with the third generation. People who were in the U.S. definitely weren’t learning or speaking it when they were interned because they were forced to surrender their ancestry. I mean, I had some family members who were moved to a different camp because they didn’t note on a questionnaire that they would surrender all of their loyalty to the Japanese government.

What’s so unbelievable about all of this is that one set of my grandparents was interned while my other set of grandparents came back from overseas to live in California. And my dad’s parents got married on the same day in 1953 as my mom’s parents. Plus, they both had their wedding receptions at the same venue. And no one in our family ever knew any of that until my parents were engaged. It’s funny looking back at pictures because both weddings had similar styles in the ’50s. I got a tattoo of the year to commemorate that story and that time. It sparks a lot of conversations when people say, ‘You don’t know anything about 1953.’ I’m like, ‘That’s fair. I didn’t claim to.’ But it’s a good conversation starter. And it’s a reminder for me of all of those histories and even the lives before them in our genealogy that led to that year.”

Photo credit: Lindy Drew / Humans of St. Louis

“It’s been a lot of putting pieces together in ways that feel central to understanding my family as it currently is. And as it relates to understanding how I feel in relation to other communities, other minorities, and the history of the United States. A lot of these things were never talked about in my family, so the stories weren’t transmitted. As a result, I was on a hunt for knowledge. Through my digging into the research, I came to the conclusion that the citizenship of my grandma’s sister was American, and we lost her to the A-bomb in Japan. Once I understood that, I understood why there was silence around it in my family. They were in survival mode to get through certain things. And then there was this push towards, ‘Okay, we’re gonna keep things very American, very light.’ It’s painful to explain something like that to younger generations. So it just never got passed down orally. I did find this shirt in my grandparents’ house, though. When I saw it, I was like, ‘This is mine forever now!’”

Photo credit: Lindy Drew / Humans of St. Louis

“I’ve kind of felt like the black sheep in my family. I’ll get very emotional about some of these things. Sometimes I’ll cry and feel grateful at the same time. It’s hard for my grandma and my parents to cry. And if I can cry, and they haven’t been able to, then that’s a bit bittersweet. But I’m hoping that through my passions and being intentional about the art I’m creating, I can bridge cultures and worlds. It seems like a lofty goal, but my dream would be to support efforts of breaking intergenerational curses or trauma through art and movement. In time, my hope is that I’ll be able to show my family, and they’ll understand. They do acknowledge that dance has always been my path in terms of finding myself. As it relates to my ancestors, in particular, I think about them not having the privilege to pursue artistry in this way because they were too in survival mode. Although I did come to find out that my grandparents, who lived in Japan, also loved to dance recreationally. And they did ballroom dance together. So, how special. But there wasn’t a lot of open emotional expression in those generations. That’s also why KRUMP and movement and me not needing to be confined by words are such a privilege. In thinking about my lineage, it’s an honor to dance because of the suppression in my Japanese culture that’s been present for more lifetimes than I even know.”

Photo credit: Lindy Drew / Humans of St. Louis

“Lately, I’ve been struggling with taking a leap to put some of my visions into reality. I’ve been studying large choreographic works on groups since college. I ran a team at WashU for a couple of years, working with 30 dancers to help them align with an appreciation for hip hop in history. And since then, I’ve been more on the freestyle side, helping dancers bring their visions to life, and bringing my dance style into other people’s choreographed works. So I’m trying to figure out, ‘Is that my main offer? How can I bring groups together to make something larger?’ I’m very much a fusion dancer. And in this space, at That Untitled Project, I was grateful to name my class Fusion Hip Hop, even though it wasn’t just that. I dance other street styles, too, so we also talked about the geographical and historical origins of many things relating to dance.

What resonates with you is what’s most important. Because there’s so much controversy in the world, when you’re attracted to something, keep that spark and follow it. So, for me, I’m thankful to have connected with others who are also looking at their lineages. And I enjoy figuring out how to connect the dots. I’ve been in more conversations with people passionate about showing the impact of dance as it relates to holistic wellness and mental health. It would be cool to champion movement as a tool for healing in our community in St. Louis, too. St. Louis has shown up for me when it comes to my own personal development and intergenerational healing. Things can be so tough here. And having lived here, I see it and want to fight for this place. I also want to fight other people when they don’t understand it.”

Photo credit: Lindy Drew / Humans of St. Louis

“Through mentoring youth, it’s also been beautiful to show them that their art is valuable. I knew a 17-year-old who had lost her mom to drug use and who I low-key considered adopting at one point. I considered it, but I was 23, and it just wasn’t the right time. Still, we really connected, and it felt good to be there for her when she’d reach out. Having at least one trusting relationship with an adult will make a huge difference. And that’s what I was for her in her time of need. She’s such a talented artist who really wants to help everybody around her, to see the people she loves have everything they want. And I have these words to say about her now because recently I had to write a reference for her. She reached out to apply for a housing program. She’s 18 now and was like, ‘I’m really proud of myself. I applied. Would you write me a reference?’ And since then, she moved into the program. But I had known her for a couple of years, and she was in our art program one summer when I got a call. So I reached out and told her, ‘I heard you’re sleeping in your car outside of a QuikTrip. We need to talk about that.’ So, it’s been great to be able to still be a source of trust and somebody she came back to to confide in. And how special for her to figure out how to also want great things for herself.”

Kyla Kikkawa | kylasumiko.com

About Humans of St. Louis
Humans of St. Louis (HOSTL) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization with the mission of sharing photographic portraits and first-person stories to highlight local needs, issues, and experiences from people in the St. Louis region. HOSTL gives followers an intimate look into the lives and struggles of the people of St. Louis, one photo and story at a time, and is the second most popular “Humans of” site in the U.S. after Humans of New York.

RAC is excited to partner with Humans of St. Louis to highlight stories from some of the talented creatives and artists who call St. Louis home. All stories and photography in the RAC + Humans of St. Louis series were created by and are credited to Lindy Drew, co-founder, lead storyteller, and book co-author of Humans of St. Louis.

Edo Rosenblith

Photo credit: Lindy Drew / HOSTL

“I’ve been painting murals ever since I graduated from art school. For this one, she’s based loosely off art school girls I knew and punk singers I’ve seen at venues like Red Flag. At first, the Foundry Art Center commissioned me to do a set of paintings, and this was the first I made for them from the series “Four Women for Three Seasons.” There’s a long history in art with artists doing sequential paintings of the seasons. I was trying to imagine what kind of image would embody spring, and this is what I came up with.

I studied at the Rhode Island School of Design, where every day was like a fashion show for some people. I mean, there was a fashion department, and students wore really crazy outfits just to go to class. So it was exciting to show up to school and see what people were wearing. Often, when you think of college, you think of students in sweatpants and hoodies. This place was the total opposite, to the point that people would come down from New York to photograph them for inspiration. And many of the students there went on to become fashion designers.

It was a little tricky blowing this piece up. Usually, I come up with an idea from scratch. But for this mural for this wall, the client was like, ‘This works.’ So I used an Airbnb across the alley for a few days and projected from the windows at night. We had to get a cherry picker to trace it. Then, painting it took about a month, but that’s mostly because it rained a lot. And I had to work around the venue’s schedule because whenever Red Flag had concerts, I had to move. So far, the mural’s only been tagged once, and it was easy to cover up. That’s pretty good for it being up for two years.”

Photo credit: Lindy Drew / HOSTL

𝑊ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑤𝑎𝑠 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑚𝑜𝑠𝑡 𝑐ℎ𝑎𝑙𝑙𝑒𝑛𝑔𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑝𝑎𝑟𝑡 𝑎𝑏𝑜𝑢𝑡 𝑝𝑎𝑖𝑛𝑡𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑠 𝑚𝑢𝑟𝑎𝑙?

“Finding the right color for the background. Because this venue is called Red Flag, the only thing the owner wanted was for the mural to be red. But the original version was yellow. So I tried 14 different reds in commercial-grade paint but couldn’t find any vibrant enough. I played with so many red swatches just to see, but nothing ever worked. Finally, I found this color yellow, which is straight yellow. And when you go to have the color made, the company literally dumps out all this yellow pigment with a little drop of white and blue. It’s like the yellowest yellow. I thought white, yellow, and black make a good combo. And when the owner saw how good it looked, he was like, ‘Okay, it’s fine.’

Often, what happens when making murals is you do what you think will work and then just hope that once the client sees it, they’re convinced it looks good. Because when making art, you’ve got to have a lot of space for artists to make stuff. If they’re excited about making something, it’ll most likely turn out well. Unless you’re on totally different pages. But you have to allow for creativity because the act of making it is where most of the decisions are made. Even for this one, I had sketches, so there was preparatory material to show. But that doesn’t necessarily show what a piece of art will actually be. Things change.”

Photo credit: Lindy Drew / HOSTL

𝐼 𝑤𝑎𝑛𝑡 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑠ℎ𝑜𝑒𝑠!

“Yeah, the shoes. You have to have good shoes.

My dad was a shoe designer who came from a long line of shoemakers. Both my parents studied art. So art was the only thing I was really good at growing up. And that’s how I ended up making art my whole life. When I found out about art school my freshman year of high school, I said, ‘I want to do that.’ Rhode Island School of Design is one of the best art schools in the country. So I got in, had a lot of fun, and met a lot of my closest friends there. And the main thing I got out of that school was learning how to make murals, but it wasn’t through any class. It was through an internship.

I found a program through the American Academy in Rome, which allows academics and artists from the States to live and work in Rome for a year in this fancy palazzo. So one of my professors helped me get an internship there working for an artist named Stephen Westfall. He makes these giant geometric abstract murals, which he calls wall drawings. And they’re sort of like an acolyte of artists like Sol LeWitt, who was one of the inventors of conceptual art in the ’60s and ’70s. Westfall never made his murals though. He made a sketch and then hired people, including me, to do four giant murals in this gallery at the Academy. For some reason, my professor thought I had experience, so she asked me, ‘Do you want to work for my friend? You know how to make murals, right?’ I was like, ‘Yeah, absolutely,’ even though I’d never done one in my life. So I faked it and acted like I knew what I was doing. Luckily, the other people knew what they were doing. I learned from them.

Next thing I knew, I was on a three-story scaffolding, painting these giant things made of hexagons based on mosaic walls and churches the artist had seen. Each one had to be super precise and perfect. We’re talking endless amounts of blue tape. Sadly, they aren’t up anymore. That’s part of the mural game. A lot of murals are temporary, especially if they’re for art institutions. Still, that artist taught us a few techniques to make clean lines and things like that that kind of demystify the process. Because people look at a giant mural on a wall, and they wonder, ‘How is that made?’ A few little tricks of the trade, and it’s easy.”

Photo credit: Lindy Drew / HOSTL

“Some friends of mine felt like they were the black sheep of the family because they wanted to go to art school. I had the opposite experience. My parents were very supportive since both my mom and dad studied art. When I told them I wanted to go to art school, they weren’t freaked out. Because they had the same experience, it was almost more expected. I mean, the question of what I was going to do with my degree was still an issue. That I had to figure out.”

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𝑊ℎ𝑎𝑡’𝑠 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑏𝑢𝑠𝑖𝑛𝑒𝑠𝑠 𝑠𝑖𝑑𝑒 𝑜𝑓 𝑏𝑒𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑎𝑛 𝑎𝑟𝑡𝑖𝑠𝑡 𝑙𝑖𝑘𝑒 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝑦𝑜𝑢? 𝐷𝑜𝑒𝑠 𝑚𝑎𝑛𝑎𝑔𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑒 𝑒𝑎𝑠𝑖𝑙𝑦 𝑜𝑟 ℎ𝑎𝑟𝑑 𝑡𝑜 𝑦𝑜𝑢?

“The hardest part is finding a way to fund your practice and your life because making art takes so much time, resources, and labor. Then you have to promote yourself. You have to wear all these hats all the time. So how do you manage all these things? And a big complaint my artist friends and I have is that we don’t have time to actually make our art. We spend so much time trying to get opportunities and applying to things, and when we get them, that’s great. But dealing with all the logistics can be tricky. So, for me, it’s a little frustrating thinking about how much time I’m really making art. It doesn’t feel like that much. But, you know, it’s part of the game. When I was in school, in this bubble, I was making art all the time. Once I got out, it was like, ‘F***. I have to make money doing this.’ Most artists I know have two jobs and then squeeze in bits of time to make art. The questions are, ‘How do you build that ratio of doing other work to fund your practice? And then how do you reverse that so the practice is funding your life?’

I found that murals and commissions are the easiest ways to make a living from my work. Because people intrinsically understand there’s a lot of labor and cost in mural making. People see the public good in beautifying a space with art, especially if it’s outside or in a commercial space. In school, students are asking, ‘How do I make a living being an artist?’ But schools rarely teach that. In part because so many professors primarily make their living in academia. That’s where they get their paycheck, which then opens up their lives to do art in the time they find. Back in the day, being a professor was a good deal, though. You’d maybe teach one or two classes, then you had the rest of the time to make art. But now, my friends who are adjuncts have to teach four or five classes a week just to get by. So academia is becoming less of a good deal for artists. Plus, there are only so many galleries that show art. I have friends with gallery representation who sell their paintings or sculptures. But there are a very limited number of spaces and opportunities. So if you can’t get into the gallery system, what do you do? You have to find another way. With a combination of public and private commissions, I can kind of cobble together a living.”

Photo credit: Lindy Drew / HOSTL

“Another way to make money as an artist is through an open call for art. You apply and might get chosen. But I prefer being asked to make new art because you don’t have to compete with other artists for opportunities. A local couple commissioned me to do a big painting for their house here. It just came from word of mouth. When someone sees your work and asks you to make something, that’s the best scenario. But for people to come to me asking for commissions took years to happen.”

𝑊ℎ𝑎𝑡’𝑠 𝑏𝑒𝑒𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑚𝑜𝑠𝑡 𝑓𝑙𝑎𝑡𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑎𝑠𝑘 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑑𝑖𝑑𝑛’𝑡 𝑠𝑒𝑒 𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑖𝑛𝑔?

“It’s funny because I’ll go to art openings, and I never know who I’m going to run into. So one time I ran into a curator who said, ‘Oh, you still live here?’ You almost have to remind people that you’re around. Then she ended up asking me to do a four-month-long mural that was up in the gallery at COCA. Showing up to events like that and being a social creature can benefit your career. Some people think artists just live in a cave and paint on the wall. And it’s like, you can’t really do that. You can’t be a hermit.”

Photo credit: Lindy Drew / HOSTL

𝐷𝑜 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑔𝑒𝑡 𝑎 𝑙𝑜𝑡 𝑜𝑓 𝑖𝑛𝑠𝑝𝑖𝑟𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 𝑓𝑟𝑜𝑚 𝑦𝑜𝑢𝑟 𝑡𝑟𝑎𝑣𝑒𝑙𝑠?

“Yeah, I’m not like sitting around just sketching piazzas around the world, but, subconsciously, I think what I see when I get away seeps into my work. St. Louis is a good home base because it’s pretty cheap. But sometimes the only way to make St. Louis work long-term is to leave. There are growing opportunities here, even though they’re limited. So the affordability allows me to travel and pursue opportunities elsewhere. Artist residencies are nice, too, because you can spend time in one place and get to know it. I’ve done a bunch of residencies. I did one in Paris through Washington University for two months. I’ve done the Vermont Studio Center twice. And I did a three-month residency in Memphis, one in Missouri, and one in upstate New York. I prefer residences, instead of going on vacation for like a week and then the trip’s over. I’ve met people who were like, ‘I’m going to Europe, and I’ll be in Rome for a day!’ ‘That’s a lot to see in a day. But have fun.’ When possible, I prefer to really spend time in a place. I mean, I was in Buenos Aires for a month, and I was just getting a taste. I’m super lucky to get to do that sometimes.

Most recently, I took part in the Jentel Artist Residency on this cattle ranch in Wyoming next to the Bighorn Mountain range. Artists are invited to apply from all over the country, and when I was there, I met a photographer and musician from Brooklyn, an abstract painter from D.C., a writer and Smokejumper from Washington state, and a landscape painter from Montana. The residency was founded by one of the scions to the Doubleday Books fortune, which at its height was the largest book publisher in the world. When the owner passed away, he wanted his daughter to be a New York City heiress and marry another wealthy businessman. Instead, she moved to Wyoming and became an artist. She used her money to buy a ranch and a giant home, and she filled it with art from her travels around the world. Her brother used his inheritance to buy the New York Mets. Then, after she passed, “…she left her house and ranch to the University of Wyoming. So this residency gives artists a studio, a stipend, and a room to live in a big mansion.”

Photo credit: Lindy Drew / HOSTL

“Being an artist, I like to have one foot in one place and one in another. You know, it’s not easy being an artist here. St. Louis can often feel like a very small town, while affording the ability to actually have a space to work and access to some funding and resources. Again, these are available but limited. In addition to these resources, we also need connections or press and new opportunities outside of St. Louis to continue to grow.

So how do you get these things? You have to make all of these parts work. An artist friend of mine in New York has a tiny studio three times as expensive as mine, plus the cost of living is so much higher. If you can sell your paintings for lots of money, that’s good. But many can’t, and those budgets go quickly. So I’ve noticed a trend of artists living in smaller cities to keep their costs down.

When I first got started, it seemed like galleries and some curators used to assume that all the best artists lived in one big city, like New York, and that all other art was just provincial. But now, these major decision-makers realize the cost of living is so high on the coasts that many incredible artists are choosing to operate in smaller cities for a better quality of life while maintaining access to those higher-level opportunities. So a city like St. Louis has become more attractive to artists. And, therefore, we are slowly gaining more attention from the coasts.

When I moved back here after school, I’d meet an artist, and they’d be like, ‘Hi and bye! I’m moving to L.A. I’m moving to New York. I’m moving to Chicago.’ But in the many years since, I’ve noticed more artists staying. And I think it’s because of the cost of living. There’s now a nice little cadre of local full-time artists here. I mean, it’s typical to meet artists who teach or do something else, like graphic design, to make ends meet. But to be a full-time artist and find a way to make it work here is a really exciting thing. With social media, there’s also an ability to be from anywhere. Being in a specific place matters less when you have a big reach. That’s the attention part, right? So it becomes less essential to only be in one certain place.”

Photo credit: Lindy Drew / HOSTL

“A big part of being able to have an art practice is being able to have a studio. It’s going to be your highest cost. Most artists I know have a studio in their basement or extra bedroom. But I get pretty messy. And I need a lot of space. It’s essential. I also don’t want to be distracted by whatever I have at home. So my studio is at the City Museum, which has artist studios on the fourth floor. I moved in there in 2013, and I’ve been working out of there ever since. The museum makes so much of its money through ticket sales and events that they’re able to almost by accident subsidize the studios. So they’re not reliant on making a lot of money from us. People are coming from all over to visit that place, so going past the crowds is a small price to pay. And the museum’s a nice place. But I can enter at any time of day. Artist studios are often in the grimmest parts of town, which can be kind of depressing. So how special to be in a place that’s so vibrant.”

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𝐻𝑜𝑤 𝑑𝑜 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑝𝑟𝑎𝑐𝑡𝑖𝑐𝑒 𝑦𝑜𝑢𝑟 𝑎𝑟𝑡 𝑤ℎ𝑒𝑛 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑡𝑟𝑎𝑣𝑒𝑙 𝑎𝑛𝑑 ℎ𝑎𝑣𝑒 𝑡𝑜 𝑠𝑒𝑡 𝑢𝑝 𝑠ℎ𝑜𝑝 𝑖𝑛 𝑑𝑖𝑓𝑓𝑒𝑟𝑒𝑛𝑡 𝑝𝑙𝑎𝑐𝑒𝑠?

“A big part of my practice is also working with bookmakers who make artist books for me. I never actually make the books; I just draw in them. I’ve made them in the past, but it’s very tedious, and I don’t have the patience for it. So I’ve been working on this one big book project for a long time. Book projects, in general, are great because I can easily fit them in a suitcase to take with me anywhere. This ongoing book project, I’ve taken all over the place. I don’t have to bring a bunch of canvases or oil paints either. Have you ever seen illuminated manuscripts? They are medieval-era books that were handmade before the printing press. A scribe would sit there, sometimes he was a monk, and they’d just hand-draw the most amazing miniature illustrations and write the whole Bible, line for line. My current book project has taken me years, but luckily, it’s not as long as the Bible. It’s a collaboration between me and my friend, Paul Legault, a poet based in New York who used to teach at WashU. And I’m illustrating his poetry. It’s a never-ending project. Maybe in the next 30 years, we’ll wrap it up. So whenever I have any chunk of time between projects, I’ll do a little bit of work on that. That’s why it’s become my go-to project when I’m at an artist residency.”

Photo credit: Lindy Drew / HOSTL

𝐷𝑜 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑐𝑜𝑛𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑛𝑡𝑙𝑦 ℎ𝑎𝑣𝑒 𝑛𝑒𝑤 𝑖𝑑𝑒𝑎𝑠 𝑟𝑢𝑛𝑛𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑡ℎ𝑟𝑜𝑢𝑔ℎ 𝑦𝑜𝑢𝑟 𝑚𝑖𝑛𝑑?

“I used to work in a very intuitive way, doodling and drawing whatever came to mind. But over the years, I had to be more intentional about the things I make. Clients want to see sketches, so I have to plan out the composition. For most of my career, my work’s been hand-drawn. I have flat files in my studio filled with over 10 years’ worth of sketches and doodles and preparatory sketches for projects, artwork, prints, books, and all kinds of other stuff. It was only in 2024 that I finally broke down and bought an iPad. Now I’m sketching everything on a screen. What I’ve been doing lately is trying to figure that thing out.

I used to go to coffee shops like this one to just draw people in a little sketchbook I’d keep in my pocket. The whole reason I moved back to St. Louis was that my dad died right before I graduated. I came to help my mom and then ended up getting a job teaching. But before that, I was working three jobs. I had no time or studio to make my art. But I still wanted to keep my practice going. So I’d always have a pocket-sized sketchbook on me. And anytime I had five minutes or five hours, I’d go to coffee shops and draw. After two years, I had a couple of hundred drawings. Those became the basis for my first solo show and the first book I had published. That got the whole ball rolling. And that’s why it’s very important to me to keep making stuff. You take a break, and you never pick it up again. If you’re not constantly making art, your desire to make art atrophies. The art practice kind of dies and withers away.”

I’m always drawing and painting something. Right now, I’m working on a mural in The Loop at the Lewis Collaborative, a building that used to be a high school that Washington University developed to have office spaces and apartments for students. But if I’m not working on a mural on site, I’m either at my drafting desk in my studio or at a residency, sketching something for a few projects at once.”

Photo credit: Lindy Drew / HOSTL

𝑊ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑗𝑜𝑏𝑠 𝑤𝑒𝑟𝑒 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑗𝑢𝑔𝑔𝑙𝑖𝑛𝑔?

“I was interning at a gallery, getting paid zero dollars. And I was a teaching assistant. But the worst job was doing art restoration of terrible art for a local restoration business. The last project was to restore these ceramic nativity scenes for churches. Kind of bizarre. But I needed money. It was art. Kind of. So I’d work until three in the morning. I had those other jobs, too, whereas this one was taking up all my time and energy. So I realized it wasn’t worth it. Luckily, I got a full-time teaching job, so I could quit the other two. And it was so nice to go there that last day, show up with all the nativity scene figures, with the baby Jesus and the cow and the manger, and give it back to that woman. She looked at it, looked at me, and said, ‘You haven’t done anything. It’s not finished.’ I was like, ‘Yeah, I quit.’”

Photo credit: Lindy Drew / HOSTL

𝐶𝑎𝑛 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑡𝑒𝑙𝑙 𝑚𝑒 𝑎𝑏𝑜𝑢𝑡 𝑦𝑜𝑢𝑟 𝑑𝑎𝑑 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑦𝑜𝑢𝑟 𝑟𝑒𝑙𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛𝑠ℎ𝑖𝑝 𝑤𝑖𝑡ℎ ℎ𝑖𝑚?

“Growing up, my family used to live in this ranch-style house in Scottsdale, Arizona. My memory of the place was that it had a pretty big studio space, and as a little kid, I’d watch my dad paint. All the paintings in our house were his — ones he either liked too much or maybe couldn’t sell. So I thought it was normal that everyone’s house was filled with their parents’ art. We ended up coming to St. Louis because my dad got a job here doing shoe design at a company called Trimfoot, which no longer exists. At the time, they were one of the last manufacturing companies for shoes in the region. And it’s ironic because now my art studio is in a building where they used to make shoes, too.

Both my parents went to art school, and they lived together in New York in the ’70s at the height of so many amazing things happening there. When my mom got mugged one too many times, they decided to leave. But I remember my dad told me this story where he sold one of his paintings to a restaurant. The restaurant had a Willem de Kooning on the wall, and they moved it to put his painting in its place. He was very proud of that. He quit making art when we moved to St. Louis. He got too busy at work designing mostly baby shoes. And there were four of us kids, so it was a lot of mouths to feed. So he put down his paint, and I literally picked it up. As a kid, I started painting on canvases and stuff. I wasn’t good academically in school, but art I was good at.

Dad ended up passing away from a stroke. Before that, he tried to help me out as much as he could. One of his old art school friends was a sculptor in Brooklyn, and my dad got me a job working with him, even though I had no experience making sculptures. I remember saying, ‘I want to move to New York like all my friends to be an artist.’ He seemed concerned, like, ‘How are we going to pay for that? How are you going to make a living?’ But he also understood that was the dream. So he lined up that job for me. He helped me out. He got it. He could be very encouraging. Unfortunately, he died not long after that, and that dream kinda died with him.”

Photo credit: Lindy Drew / HOSTL

𝑊ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑤𝑜𝑢𝑙𝑑 𝑏𝑒 𝑦𝑜𝑢𝑟 𝑑𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑚 𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑚𝑖𝑠𝑠𝑖𝑜𝑛, 𝑜𝑟 ℎ𝑎𝑣𝑒 𝑦𝑜𝑢 ℎ𝑎𝑑 𝑖𝑡 𝑎𝑙𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑑𝑦?

“My dream commission would be painting a mural-sized work in a museum. Did you see the 𝐵𝑒𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑆𝑒𝑎 exhibit by German artist Anselm Kiefer at the Saint Louis Art Museum? He makes massive building-sized paintings. Someone I know who works there said they brought in a special crew to install the work from Paris, where the artist lives, and it took weeks. Some of the paintings were even still wet. So something like that would be cool. I’ve done tiny things you can hold in your hand, books, and also bigger stuff. Someday, I’d love to publish the book project I’ve been making on and off for years now. But I’d really love to do a large commission. And it doesn’t have to be in a museum. It could be on the side of another building.”

Photo credit: Lindy Drew / HOSTL

“After COVID, the Biden administration passed a bunch of relief bills, and St. Louis got recovery money through ARPA, the American Rescue Plan Act. Well, the Regional Arts Commission (RAC) convinced the mayor and the city council to allocate $1 million to do murals all around town. The idea was to spread the wealth and have two murals in every ward. So RAC had an open call for local artists who had to have lived in St. Louis since March 2020. A lot of muralists couldn’t apply because they lived outside the boundary of the City of St. Louis. Good for me, I’ve been living here a long time. So, 28 artists were selected, two for each of the 14 wards. And I was selected for the 10th Ward, which I reside in, and covers a big section from Forest Park to Central West End and a bit north of that.

My alderwomen helped with the artist selection process and tasked me with finding a site. She wanted a business or property owned by someone who wouldn’t otherwise have the means to afford a mural commission. I was searching the whole ward, and it took a long time to find just the right client. As RAC and I looked for buildings, we’d find one, try to contact the owner, but couldn’t track them down. Sometimes there was a ghost landlord situation. Or, the owners who would get back to us would be like, ‘I’d love a mural! But I can’t because my building is so old that I get historic tax credits to maintain the facade.’ During my search, I learned all kinds of weird rules like that.”

Photo credit: Lindy Drew / HOSTL

“We finally found a building owner who responded to our emails, excited about putting up a mural. And it turned out to be the owner of Soll’s Gateway Market, a grocery store on Kingshighway close to Fountain Park. You’ve probably driven by it 100 million times. So I drove over to what I thought was just a big boarded-up building, walked inside, and there was a whole f***ing grocery store packed with people shopping.

I learned from the owner that Soll’s Market had been around since 1966 and was a speciality grocery store serving people from across St. Louis who loved their selection of cut meat and other products. It also served as a meeting point for the Black community, and was a marker where families had been coming for generations. Before that, the building itself was a bread factory built in the 20s. And it’s been occupied consistently for 100 years. The current owner bought the building a few years ago. He’s from Pakistan, moved to America, and lived in the Portland area, where he owned convenience stores. He came to St. Louis because his daughter moved here. On May 16, 2025, the building got destroyed in the tornado.

At first, I was a little worried about the optics of the project. Like, ‘A white Jewish guy making a mural on a grocery store in the middle of a Black neighborhood in St. Louis? I’m not so sure I’m the right person.’ It’s important to be sensitive to these things, generally, but especially if you’re from St. Louis. Then I realized the owner is a Muslim immigrant from Pakistan, whose number one product is pork. I’m Jewish, and the store’s primary clientele are Black folks. All those contradictions and convergences made it feel like it was somehow okay. With the sign-off and enthusiasm from all parties, I decided that if I just made something good that we could all feel proud of, it would hopefully transcend everything else. So we agreed to do it.

The mural sketch went through many iterations. I met and interviewed all the employees, my friend photographed them, and I was really moved that so many had been working there for over 20 years. For others, it was their first job after going through difficult circumstances, like exiting the correctional system or recovering from addiction. It was hard for some to get work, and this grocery store offered opportunity without judgment. And a lot of interesting stories.”

Photo credit: Lindy Drew / HOSTL

“My first idea was to make a mural that celebrated the employees. If you remember, during COVID, grocery store employees were considered essential workers. But when I showed the sketch to the owner, he didn’t like it. So I threw that all out the window. The issue was, if I did a mural of specific employees, and someone got fired or left, then what? So I decided to do a big still life of the speciality food, because that’s the essence of the store and what it provides for the community. In the end, the owner basically wanted a mural that acted as colorful advertising for his store. Okay, I could do that. However, it was tricky because I didn’t want it to be advertising. I wanted to make sure he was happy, but it still had to be art.

We started going back and forth on the design. Time was passing, and we had a hard deadline with RAC. So I ended up having to finish it in just two weeks. I told him, ‘I need to start making this now, or it’s not going to happen.’ And that’s what happens sometimes. An actual painting needs to start at some point, or it’s not gonna get finished. So I painted it. I had all these powder-coated aluminum panels in my studio that I painted over from an old project. They were made of the same material as a stop sign. And, put together, each panel created a mural that was 10 by 23 feet. So this project took up my whole studio. Then I had to hire a crew to come move it a few miles from the City Museum and install it on the side of Soll’s.

We ripped the old corrugated metal paneling off the market to realize we were installing a mural into an old window that had been covered up for decades. Many historic industrial buildings in St. Louis have these giant windows because they needed a lot of light to illuminate the factory floors. So these big, beautiful windows got boarded up over the years because of concerns about crime or other things. It was wild that day to literally peel back all these layers of history.”

Photo credit: Lindy Drew / HOSTL

“It took my team and me a couple of days to install the mural, then I spent about a week or two doing a bunch of touch-ups. While I was painting, people would come by and look at me working. Well, I’ve probably done over 30 commissioned projects all around the city and county over the years. But this one, by far, was the most positive feedback I got from any project. 

The Fountain Park neighborhood was so appreciative of using art to celebrate a central business in the community. It was such a nice thing. Before the tornado, Soll’s was incorporated in the the daily practice of shopping, and to have that routine made beautiful was something special. Folks would come up and say to me, ‘‘Oh, I have a barbecue shop.’ Or, ‘I have a church.’ Or, ‘I have a place. Can you do something on the side of my building?’ I was so touched. Usually, when I make stuff, I’m kinda wondering, ‘Is this any good?’ While making my murals, I don’t always get a lot of feedback. ​​And this was real feedback from the people who lived there, which was really nice. Then I started making relationships with an entirely new community in North St. Louis. Overall, their feedback helped make me feel happy with the project.”

Photo credit: Lindy Drew / HOSTL

“Unfortunately, fast forward to when the tornado came and ripped off the roof, destroying the building. Because of the historic disinvestment, so many buildings were already on their last legs. There was little accountability from the ghost landlords, and city resources weren’t provided to maintain many of the properties. So the tornado just finished the job. That was another reason why I decided to make the mural on separate aluminum panels. Because if I had done it on the wall itself, the paint on the building was already chipping off. So it ended up being a good decision. Otherwise, the mural would have been destroyed like the rest of the building.

The owner called me up a few days after the tornado, like, ‘Hey, my building’s destroyed, but the mural is okay.’ For some reason, the tornado didn’t touch the mural. I mean, we installed it very well. We put it up there so it would never come off. And it didn’t. It’s secure. So the roof came off the building, and the windows were blown out, but the mural — fine. He told me he’d like to try to reopen and put the mural somewhere else. But, you know, easier said than done. So that’s where things are now.

For a long time, I didn’t have the heart to go see it. Then I finally did, and I was shocked. I assumed there would be a bunch of debris that hit it or something. But it’s totally fine. So now I figure the mural should be taken off the building because the place could collapse. But I’m not totally sure. Maybe if that doesn’t work, we can try to move the mural to another spot. We’ll see. It would be amazing if it could be saved and find a good home.”

Photo credit: Lindy Drew / HOSTL

𝐻𝑜𝑤 𝑑𝑖𝑑 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑟𝑡 𝑡𝑜 𝑓𝑎𝑙𝑙 𝑖𝑛𝑡𝑜 𝑦𝑜𝑢𝑟 𝑛𝑖𝑐ℎ𝑒? 𝐵𝑒𝑐𝑎𝑢𝑠𝑒 𝑦𝑜𝑢𝑟 𝑎𝑟𝑡 𝑑𝑒𝑓𝑖𝑛𝑖𝑡𝑒𝑙𝑦 ℎ𝑎𝑠 𝑎 𝑣𝑒𝑟𝑦 𝑑𝑖𝑠𝑡𝑖𝑛𝑐𝑡 𝑙𝑜𝑜𝑘.

“Just by doing it, by repetition for years. I’ve been doing it long enough that by the act of doing it, you develop ways of working. And that informs what you make: ‘This works, this doesn’t work.’ So, subconsciously, I kind of work it all in. I don’t feel like I’ve developed my own distinctive style. But people tell me that I have. I guess I’ll trust others’ judgment.”

Edo Rosenblith | edorosenblith.com 

About Humans of St. Louis
Humans of St. Louis (HOSTL) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization with the mission of sharing photographic portraits and first-person stories to highlight local needs, issues, and experiences from people in the St. Louis region. HOSTL gives followers an intimate look into the lives and struggles of the people of St. Louis, one photo and story at a time, and is the second most popular “Humans of” site in the U.S. after Humans of New York.

RAC is excited to partner with Humans of St. Louis to highlight stories from some of the talented creatives and artists who call St. Louis home. All stories and photography in the RAC + Humans of St. Louis series were created by and are credited to Lindy Drew, co-founder, lead storyteller, and book co-author of Humans of St. Louis. 

Content Warning: This story contains references to suicide.

Dawn Weber 

Photo credit: Lindy Drew / HOSTL

“My trumpet has gotten me everything that I have today. I’m from Waukon, Iowa, a small town on the border of Wisconsin and Minnesota with a population of less than 4,000. I grew up on a farm, and where we’re from, there are a lot of people just making it by. My dad helped pay the bills by playing saxophone with a country-western band five nights a week. And since we were farmers, that’s how he ended up putting food on the table, other than what we grew in our garden, and if we butchered one of our pigs or cows. So my family was extremely poor, and I knew I’d have to get off the farm somehow. I also knew I wanted to be a professional trumpet player. My family thought I was weird; I was so misunderstood. I was the type of kid who, once we were done opening presents for the holidays, I just wanted to go up to my room and play my trumpet. And I was a little wild child. I drove my grandmother’s car accidentally off a bluff. So everyone had all these feelings that Dawn was a hot mess.

I started looking at opportunities in performing arts high schools to start this journey. I made an audition tape, sent it in to this special school, and they accepted me. I raised enough money to pay for the first quarter, and my parents knew they wouldn’t be able to stop me. So I got on a Greyhound with my trumpet and a suitcase headed to North Carolina, my mom came with me to make sure I got there, and she went back home so I could do my thing. Then, before Christmas break, I had to tell the dean, ‘I’ve got to be honest with you. I saved up enough for the first part of school, but I’m like really poor. Even if my family wanted to help me, they can’t.’ Well, the school came up with a full scholarship for me, and I was able to stay. So, an education, a bachelor’s degree, a car, a phone, insurance, a house — everything that I have today and have done is because of that dang trumpet.”

Photo credit: Lindy Drew / HOSTL

“It’s not like the person picks the instrument. The instrument picks the person. Kind of like Harry Potter and how the wand chooses the wizard. Originally, all my friends in middle school were going to play flute. So I thought, ‘Yes! We’ll be able to play flute together.’ And when you show up to class and get to try an instrument, all my friends could play the flute. But I couldn’t at all. Then our teacher put a trumpet in my hands. I put it up to my face and, for some reason that day, the sound was this magic thing that came out of this horn that was handed to me. Everyone listening was like, ‘You’re a trumpet player.’ And I was like, ‘No, I am not a trumpet player.’ But they said, ‘You are.’ So the teacher and I made a deal. If I hated the trumpet, they’d let me switch. But they were going to have me play trumpet first. And, of course, once I started, I couldn’t put it down. It was this obsession. And that’s kind of the weird thing about professional musicians and their instruments. When you can’t put it down, that’s usually a sign.”

Photo credit: Lindy Drew / HOSTL

𝐻𝑜𝑤 𝑚𝑎𝑛𝑦 𝑡𝑟𝑢𝑚𝑝𝑒𝑡𝑠 𝑑𝑜 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑜𝑤𝑛?

“I have a lot of trumpets. As a classical trumpet player, you have to have a piccolo trumpet. I have an E-flat D, the Blackburn, because that’s the modern current thing. I still have my Schilke E-flat and D trumpet. And then I have a C trumpet, a Cornet, a flugelhorn, and a B-flat trumpet. And that’s pretty much what you need in your career as a classical trumpet player. But since I play classical, jazz, and Latin, I need the Cornet, the flugelhorn, and the B-flat trumpets. I’m starting to learn the bass. And I really want to learn to play drums. But the trumpet is taking up my whole life right now.”

Photo credit: Lindy Drew / HOSTL

“My freshman year of college, my parents came down to my school to visit. And this was during a time in our relationship when we finally had a connection. Like, ‘Dawn’s not screwed up. Dawn’s doing good. She got a full scholarship. She’s paying her bills. She’s not this messed-up kid. She’s really special. She’s got it together.’ Then, on their way back home, their plane crashed into a mountain. They were flying in a Cessna. Two of their friends had a daughter down in South Carolina, and they knew I was studying in North Carolina, so they invited my parents on their trip. Like, ‘We’re going to visit our kid. We can drop you off so you can see Dawn.’ And when my parents visited me, we had these amazing first-time experiences. My dad and I even got to drink a beer together. I wasn’t even 21, but I asked him, ‘Dad, will you buy some for me?’ and he said yes. Something about that finally felt like we had an adult relationship that you get to have with your parents. I even remember thinking when they left, ‘My parents are actually cool.’ And I think they thought, ‘Our kid’s actually pretty cool.’ But then they were gone, just like that.”

Photo credit: Lindy Drew / HOSTL

“I found out my parents were missing because the plane they were on went missing. My sister called asking, ‘When did mom and dad leave after visiting you?’ I told her it was a couple of days ago, and that’s how I realized they hadn’t gotten back home. Turns out, they were in the mountains for five days. A search party was trying to find them, and I remember getting off the phone with them when they said, ‘We have to call it a day. We haven’t found anything.’ Then I went into my living room, and on the news it said, ‘The missing plane has been found. There are no survivors.’ I called my siblings back to let them know, ‘I just saw the news. They’ve been found.’ And they were like, ‘It’s true. We just couldn’t say anything yet because we had to make sure it was them from their dental records.’

As time passed, I came to believe my parents’ death was something meant to happen. That was their journey, that was their time. But back then, since I was the black sheep of the family, everyone else pretty much said what happened was my fault. Like, ‘They came to visit YOU, and you’re the reason.’ Whatever. People handle grief in their own ways. But, ya know, when you go through something like all that when you’re young, you can be pretty resilient. There’s an option to crumble, but there’s this other option, like, ‘There is no way I can fail. There is nowhere to go. There is no safety net. There is nothing.’ So I felt like I had to succeed. And it became this driving force. That ‘maybe I can go back home,’ that wasn’t there for me. There had never been a ‘maybe I can ask my parents for help.’ So that all pushed me even more to strive.”

Photo credit: Lindy Drew / HOSTL

“I’ll tell you a trippy story. This friend of mine told me about a Native American woman in the Granite City area who she said I needed to have a reading with. I figured, ‘Why not?’ She does this smudging and you go around a medicine wheel based on where you’re at in your cycle and what’s going on in your life and you find out your spirit animals. And she said to me, ‘The black panther walks with you by night, and the hawk flies with you by day.’ I was like, ‘Cool, this is interesting.’ I was going to ask her, ‘I’m not sure what to do about this job offer I got. Should I take it?’ And, instead, she started saying things even though she didn’t know anything about me. She said, ‘There are a lot of Ws in the room right now.’ And she started naming them, like, ‘William.’ I said, ‘I have a grandfather named William.’ Then she said, ‘Wayne,’ and started going down a list. Suddenly, she stopped to say, ‘Your parents are here. Your mom is here. And your dad is right here. They want to let you know how proud of you they are. And that they know it was hard. But they were so happy to see you before they left.’

She told me, ‘If they didn’t come down to see you, they would have died anyway.’ And then she started talking about, ‘There’s a car going down the road. And your mom is sitting like so. Did your mom get migraines?’ I said, ‘Really bad ones.’ She was like, ‘Your mom is telling me…’ and I said, ‘I don’t know if I want to hear this.’ But she started doing this thing with her finger like my mom used to do, and she said, ‘She wants me to tell you this. And she wants you to listen. It wasn’t your fault. Don’t you let anybody else make you feel like it was.’ I was not expecting any of that. But there was so much peace in hearing it, especially the part about how their plane crash was all meant to happen. This woman didn’t know about the accident. She didn’t ask me for or want any information before we talked. And her gift was that she sees people on the other side who tell her things. Talk about how life rings you.”

Photo credit: Lindy Drew / HOSTL

“Back to my journey of playing the trumpet. I learned it was hard for women to be taken seriously because you had to look and be a certain way. Well, when I auditioned for Juilliard, it was between another trumpet player and me. And they chose the other guy because he looked more and dressed more like a trumpet player. So I started to wear dudes’ clothing, but that wasn’t working. Then, when I came to St. Louis, I was going to play for the St. Louis Symphony’s principal trumpet player at the time, Susan Slaughter. Finally, I was like, ‘I’m going to play for a woman. I’m not going to be judged on my gender and appearance.’ Still, I was told that I don’t look like a trumpet player. And that people are going to take one look at me and assume I’m not very good.

After our encounter, I started bawling, like, ‘She’s right. She speaks the truth. Now I know why no one takes me seriously. It’s true. No one will ever believe I’m any good.’ I was crushed. I didn’t want to get out of bed for a week. I just felt like, ‘What’s the point? I left home for this? My parents died for this?’ I was in my head about it all. And that was the changing moment of my life when I realized, ‘I’m not being myself. Look at yourself, trying to wear men’s clothes and be ultra conservative.’ It got to the point where I was like, ‘All of this doesn’t matter. People are going to judge you.’ So at 24, I started dying my hair ‘F you’ orange. I pierced my eyebrow. And I dressed how I wanted. And in the end, all of that ended up giving me more respect.

I finished up my bachelor’s degree at the Cleveland Institute of Music, moved to Illinois, and then came to Missouri, where I made it my home and have been ever since. Later on, someone recommended, ‘Talk to Susan again. She feels really bad.’ Well, I got back in touch with her, and she ended up giving me a chance to sub with the symphony. And I finally started dressing how I wanted to dress, unlike being this stereotypical symphony musician. It was like, ‘For this gal to walk out on stage with hair like that, she must be good.’ And it changed everything. A lot of these stories nobody knows. They just know what I do. But this has been the journey.”

Photo credit: Lindy Drew / HOSTL

“Interestingly, it was the era of retro swing coming back, so I approached this modern swing band that was in town. I said, ‘I notice you don’t have a trumpet player. I know I don’t look like one. And I already know you’re going to assume I’m really bad. But I’m not. I studied at the Cleveland Institute of Music. I played in salsa bands. Anyway, just let me know.’ So they let me play and accepted me into their band. Well, one night, I also sang a song. And the band was like, ‘You have to sing that one song every night we play.’ Then I wrote a song. And they were like, ‘You have to sing that song, too.’ Then I wrote another song. And another and another and another. That’s how I started songwriting and singing as a front person.”

Photo credit: Lindy Drew / HOSTL

“I was subbing with SLSO, touring with this group called Vargas Swing, and starting to do the trumpet competition circuit. One competition, called the Ellsworth Smith International Trumpet Solo, I tried submitting to three times, finished the process, but didn’t get chosen until the last time. The repertoire is insane. You have to do a baroque concerto, a classical concerto, a French piece, an American sonata — these are multi-movement works — a modern unaccompanied piece, and something else for six pieces total. So one year, I was going to submit an audition, but I felt like what I recorded was so bad that I wasn’t going to send it in. And my friend pushed me, like, ‘You’re going. By the deadline, your application is going to be in the mail.’

I got up early on a Saturday morning, got my tail down to the post office, and put the CD in the mail. I was so embarrassed, I thought the judges were going to laugh at it. Then, months later, I got a random call from this elderly legend: ‘This is Edward Tarr.’ I was like, ‘Yeah, okay. Who is this really?’ I thought someone was messing with me. And ‘the’ Edward Tarr said, ‘You submitted for the Ellsworth Smith Competition. There were up to eight people we were accepting, but this year we’re only accepting five.’ I kept thinking it was a joke. Like, ‘I just moved to St. Louis. Nobody knows who I am. There’s no way anybody would know Edward Tarr.’ Then I realized, ‘S***, this is the guy.’ I made it into the competition.

Me, two other Americans, a trumpet player from France, and one from Belarus went to Germany to compete. It was like the trumpet Olympics. And it was absolutely terrifying. All those times I had tried applying, and then I did, and then I quit. Being an artist, there are ups and downs where you wonder, ‘I did that? That was horrible. I suck really bad right now.’ And then you’ll feel the complete opposite about what you’re doing, like, ‘I don’t suck. I’m actually pretty good.’ Then that might not last, and you go back to that negative self-talk, like, ‘I should just give this up.’ Sometimes that is just being an artist. It’s a journey of ups and downs and victories, and not everything is going perfectly. But it’s also about how you pick yourself back up and keep moving forward.”

Photo credit: Lindy Drew / HOSTL

“Playing trumpet is like being the quarterback on a football team, or a pitcher on the baseball field, or a basketball player who shoots three pointers. The only way I can describe how it feels is that when you’re young, you’re invincible. You don’t have to warm up before a gig, and you play all day. Then you have times where there have been mishaps, something didn’t go well, and you wonder, ‘What was that?’ Or maybe you missed something big during a performance. Because when a trumpet misses something big, or stuff doesn’t come out of it, it is humiliating. Everybody can hear it. Or if you miss a big entrance, you start going through this period where you doubt and second-guess yourself. And as a trumpet player, you have to be fearless. You can’t doubt. You’ve got to come in and nail it. When you’re young, it’s exciting. You want that hard piece. But it’s terrifying, too. You can go into a mental slump of being so scared. It’s like an athlete going through a slump and losing the game because they’re in their head. And to continue to stay in the game, they’ve got to get through it. I have so many books in my library about the mental game. It’s not just for athletes, but musicians too.

Sometimes I have jobs where I feel totally comfortable. I play with the Bach Society of St. Louis. I play at Jazz St. Louis. And sometimes I can still get so nervous, like, ‘Why did I choose this profession? I don’t want to go out there. I feel like throwing up, I’m so scared.’ So I have to deal with these things. Plus, as you get older, your body starts to change. And for a trumpet player, it affects your face. Colleagues who have been in the game as long as I have, who are the same age, we are going through it. So us friends talk about it, because it helps to be open and transparent. We go through ups and downs physically and vocally. Sometimes my voice feels great, then it feels like trash for a long time, and I still have to get through it. I still have to show up. I still have to perform. It still has to be amazing. And, for me, I go through everything in my head, like, ‘I missed that, I missed that, I missed that.’ I calculate everything.”

Photo credit: Lindy Drew / HOSTL

“Overworking my muscles from playing takes its toll. So now I’m getting acupuncture on my face, and I have a sports massage therapist who does deep tissue work on my face, neck, and shoulders. Anything to help me stay in the game. My voice will even be hanging on by a thread through weather changes sometimes. And every musician’s instrument can make them go through their different ailments. Playing the trumpet, I do need to avoid getting injured and not overplaying, which could result in tearing my muscles. That can really happen, and it literally affects my chops. My voice is actually the instrument going through the trumpet. Even Louis Armstrong blew his face out. He literally split it open, and blood was everywhere. When that happened, he couldn’t play. His whole history and backstory are amazing. The mob was after him because they were supporting him, and he couldn’t play on the dates he was scheduled. So he was kind of on the run at one point, hiding from them because he couldn’t play the dates he was scheduled.”

Photo credit: Lindy Drew / HOSTL

“I give private trumpet lessons at the O’Fallon Illinois Township and the Lindbergh School District, which both have 250-member marching bands. I teach trumpet and jazz combos at The University of Missouri–St. Louis. And I teach at JazzU, a program at Jazz St. Louis for high schoolers. So, as I get older, I’m figuring out that it’s getting harder to hustle at this pace. I need to figure out how to say no and cut back. I mean, the other day, I didn’t have any breaks running from one class to make it to another, and then I had to get to one of my other teaching commitments. I was trying to eat cold stew while driving just to get some dinner in me, and it was like, ‘This is ridiculous!’ Some days, I don’t even have time to pee. It’s like, ‘Stop doing this to yourself.’ Caring 200% and wanting to strive for the best — it’s starting to weigh on me. I know there’s a point where I want to retire from the front and just become a side man, because the front person has to do all the talking, designing the sets, writing, and arranging the music. Plus, I’m my own agent. So I contract the gigs, I take care of payroll, and I have to figure out all the business stuff and taxes.”

Photo credit: Lindy Drew / HOSTL

𝑌𝑜𝑢 𝑤𝑜𝑟𝑘 𝑖𝑛 𝑠𝑜 𝑚𝑎𝑛𝑦 𝑔𝑒𝑛𝑟𝑒𝑠, 𝑡𝑜𝑜. 𝑇𝑎𝑙𝑘 𝑎𝑏𝑜𝑢𝑡 𝑝𝑒𝑟𝑓𝑜𝑟𝑚𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑎𝑙𝑜𝑛𝑒 𝑣𝑒𝑟𝑠𝑢𝑠 𝑤𝑖𝑡ℎ 𝑔𝑟𝑜𝑢𝑝𝑠.

“I just put together a salsa group a year ago, so since then I’ve been learning to sing in Spanish. I have to admit, I keep doing this to myself. And then people end up really liking it! And then we get booked. And then I’m like, ‘Oh my god, now I have to learn my Spanish songs. I have to prepare this. I’m so in the weeds.’ I’m actually such a shy person. That’s why people don’t know these stories I’m sharing. I would rather be in the back and not in the front. But I kind of got shoved up front when I sang and wrote and was encouraged to do more and more. So I started writing and performing more. Then it was like, ‘People really like you, Dawn. Start talking to the audience.’ At first, I didn’t know what to say. At one performance, I stuck my foot in my mouth, like, ‘I’m so glad we’re doing this Alzheimer’s benefit! Because I know I’m going to get it.’ And the band was floored, like, ‘Oh. My. God.’ But I was like, ‘What’s wrong with that? I probably am.’ Meanwhile, they were like, ‘But you don’t say that, Dawn.’”

Photo credit: Lindy Drew / HOSTL

“One gig when I was playing a lot on the road, we drove overnight to play at this winery in the blazing sun. They didn’t have us in the shade, and I was miserable. There I was in the center, making sarcastic comments, like, ‘What’s it like out there in the shade? It looks so beautiful.’ Afterwards, people came up to us saying, ‘We are so sorry that you had to play in this weather.’ So, what people got out of our performance was that they felt sorry for us? I thought, ‘Okay, so there’s no more of that. Now, no matter if you have a fever, no matter if you are going through a divorce, no matter if you are in a bad relationship and everything in your life is crumbling, no matter if your best friend has died — it doesn’t matter if your best friend killed himself — it doesn’t matter. You get on that stage, and it is shoulders back, chest up, smile. No matter how crappy you’re feeling or whatever you’re doing, no matter if you’ve had a thyroidectomy and you can’t sing the songs that people want you to — you just sing. It doesn’t matter what you are going through. You hide it, suck it up, and do your job.’ All of these are real examples, by the way. I mean, I remember after my best friend, Nathan Jatcko, killed himself. We were duo partners. He was like my brother. I still had to get up on stage. That’s the thing. You have to perform and pretend that ‘I love life.’

Eventually, I finally pushed back when I kept getting asked to sing a certain song that I couldn’t at that time due to nerve damage because of thyroid cancer. I just dropped the C-word, and people were like, ‘I’m so sorry.’ Then I had my thyroid taken out and nerve damage for a year. Trying to sing while waiting for all those nerves to grow back, it doesn’t matter — the show must go on. I also remember one performance when I was a guest artist for this big band, when my adopted parents came up, saying, ‘You look so happy. It’s so good to see you smiling.’ Meanwhile, on the inside, I was like, ‘Dude, I hate my fucking life. This is my fucking job to look happy. I’m even running a fever tonight.’ I wasn’t okay, and no one would ever know.”

Photo credit: Lindy Drew / HOSTL

“Going through all that, I had to find my joy on stage. And I learned to find it by playing for the musicians I’m working with instead of outward to the audience. On stage, I’m in my bubble with my friends, unless I’m playing at a huge venue, I’m more performing inward. And people like the connection we’re making on stage with each other, so it still works. That gives me my comfort now, no matter what. I am making music with my friends. So my intention is to enjoy being with them. And people get to watch that.”

Photo credit: Lindy Drew / HOSTL

“I’m starting to talk more about the color of my hair, like, ‘Oh, do you know why it’s pink?’ Screw it. I’m doing it. I’m finally saying, ‘This is why.’ And the reason why I have pink hair is that when I dyed my hair ‘F you’ orange and was doing bright poppy colors, I thought, ‘I’ve always wanted to do pink, but I don’t know if the St. Louis Symphony would still hire me.’ So one summer, I just dyed my hair this bubble gum pink. It was my dream color, and it was so cute! Then I had gotten called to do a job, so I was like, ‘I guess we’re going to find out.’ And there was no problem. There was never any issue with me having pink hair. So that became my trademark. Now I just do different shades of pink, and I’m kinda known as the trumpet player with the pink hair. So when I retire from this job, what color am I going to be? I don’t know. Will I still stay pink? Will I change to pastel? Who knows? Because, right now, my look is kind of tied to my job.”

“Sometimes when I play the trumpet, there are moments that suck me in, and performing gives me this rush like, ‘I feel like a god!’ Then the rest of my career, the trumpet’s just stomped on me to the ground, like, ‘Oh, you think you’re a god? Well, you’re gonna miss this, and you’re gonna be terrified from now on.’ So when I feel a rush that everything is working, I’m good in my head, I’m feeling comfortable, and everything is feeling good, I’ll come home, and my family will ask, ‘How did it go?’ I can still be so hard on myself. I’ll say, ‘It was a B. I’d give myself an 85%. It could have been better.’ Every once in a while, I might give myself a 98%, but never 100%.”

𝑊ℎ𝑎𝑡’𝑠 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑏𝑒𝑠𝑡 𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑝𝑙𝑖𝑚𝑒𝑛𝑡 𝑎𝑛𝑦𝑜𝑛𝑒’𝑠 𝑒𝑣𝑒𝑟 𝑔𝑖𝑣𝑒𝑛 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑓𝑟𝑜𝑚 ℎ𝑒𝑎𝑟𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑝𝑙𝑎𝑦?

“Mostly, I get, ‘We saw you had a trumpet when you were setting up, but we weren’t expecting what we heard.’ I look unassumingly like I wouldn’t be any good. So it’s the shock factor. People will walk by the stage before the performance begins and ask, ‘Are you going to play those?’ I’ll joke, ‘No, they’re just props. They’re just here cause they’re pretty.’”

Dawn Weber | dawnweber.com

About Humans of St. Louis
Humans of St. Louis (HOSTL) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization with the mission of sharing photographic portraits and first-person stories to highlight local needs, issues, and experiences from people in the St. Louis region. HOSTL gives followers an intimate look into the lives and struggles of the people of St. Louis, one photo and story at a time, and is the second most popular “Humans of” site in the U.S. after Humans of New York.