On the evening of June 27, 2026, a tattoo shop became something else — a gallery, a gathering place, a temporary home for a body of work that had been building toward this moment for months. DAMAGE wasn’t just a show. It was an attempt to put a collection of raw, unresolved emotion in front of people and see what happened when it left the studio and entered a room full of strangers, friends, and everyone in between. What happened, it turns out, was more than I could have hoped for.

I want to start by saying thank you — to everyone who showed up, who spent time with the work, who asked questions, who bought pieces and gave them a home. This show was built on paintings that dig into discomfort, disorientation, and the kind of feelings most of us don’t talk about openly: fracture, alienation, dissonance, and loss. Putting that kind of work on display is always a little vulnerable, and having a room full of people meet it with curiosity and generosity instead of turning away meant more than I can easily put into words. The turnout to the show exceeded anything I expected, and that support doesn’t go unnoticed.

None of this would have been possible without Singularity Tattoo and Gallery, who opened their space and let it be transformed for a night into something entirely different from its everyday rhythm. There’s something fitting about hosting a show like DAMAGE inside a tattoo shop — a place already built around marking the body permanently, around turning pain and meaning into something visible and lasting. Singularity didn’t just lend a wall; they lent an atmosphere, a spirit, and a level of trust that let this collection exist in exactly the kind of raw, unpolished space it needed. Huge thanks to Ian Rumley and the entire Singularity team for welcoming this invasion with open arms and making the whole night feel effortless.

Equally essential to the evening was Vinnola’s Italian Market, who catered the event and made sure no one left hungry while they took in the work. There’s a particular kind of hospitality that comes from good food shared in a room full of art, and Vinnola’s brought exactly that — warmth, generosity, and flavor that gave people a reason to linger a little longer, talk a little more, and turn a gallery opening into something closer to a gathering.

Beyond the incredible hosts and caterers, DAMAGE was made by the people who filled the room. Conversations happened in front of paintings that don’t offer easy answers — pieces about psychological rupture, about feeling estranged, about the strange ache of finally being seen after years of being overlooked. Watching people sit with that discomfort rather than rush past it was the whole point. Art like this only works if someone’s willing to meet it halfway, and the crowd did exactly that, again and again, throughout the night.

Selling work is always a strange kind of honor. Handing over a painting means handing over something that started as a private, difficult feeling and trusting someone else to carry it forward into their own life. Every piece that found a new home carries a piece of that vulnerability with it, and I’m endlessly grateful to the collectors who chose to take that on.

What happened at the end of the night, however, is the part that’s stuck with me the most. As the show wound down, one patron — who’d rather stay unnamed — quietly loaded up the leftover food from Vinnola’s and spent the rest of the evening driving around, handing it out to people sleeping on the street. No announcement, no fanfare, just a simple act and then they were gone. It felt like an unplanned extension of everything DAMAGE was trying to get at: that discomfort, loss, and being overlooked aren’t just themes on a canvas, they’re lived realities for people just outside the door. That small, unasked-for act of generosity turned the evening into something bigger than an art show.

DAMAGE may be over, but the aftermath of it — the conversations started, the connections made, the work that found new walls to hang on — is still settling in. Thank you again to Singularity Tattoo and Gallery, to Vinnola’s Italian Market, and to everyone who walked through the door. This show was a reminder of why putting difficult, honest work into the world is always worth it. More to come soon.