Rochester Studio (1998-1999): Thesis Year Under Pulsing Lights

Westwood Village, Los Angeles – Where Academia Met the Underground

February 1998. The air smelled of turpentine and anticipation. As I balanced my final college year. with a growing obsession for painting, the Rochester Studio became my secret laboratory—just blocks from UCLA’s lecture halls but worlds away in spirit.

Outside, Los Angeles throbbed with pre-millennium tension. The electronic music scene was rewriting nightlife, and those synthetic beats seeped into my canvases like a second heartbeat.

The Crucible of Sound & Color

🎧 Y2K Soundtrack

Dawn drives home from Warehouse raves, eyes bleary but mind electric

Daft Punk demos on KCRW buzzing through studio speakers

The hypnotic whump-whump of bass bins under Venice Beach sunrises

📚 Last Semester Alchemy

Juggling final art history papers with all-night painting sessions

Campus libraries vs. my canvas-strewn sanctuary

Professors thought I was studying. I was studying light.

🖌 The Paintings That Emerged

Large-scale works vibrating with rave’s neon energy

Medium studies where brushstrokes mimicked synth arpeggios

The first metallic pigments—unconscious homage to DJ gear glinting under strobes