Walking To Practice

The very first stencil I created holds a special place in my heart. In 2020, like so many others, our family found ourselves navigating a world filled with uncertainty. The pandemic was raging, and life felt fragile. We spent six months bouncing between Airbnbs and family properties in northern Maine, and it was during this time that our family’s creative roots began to take shape.

I was searching for a creative medium that would be accessible to the kids, given their ages, but also allow us to produce something we could genuinely be proud of—without the need for a 10,000-hour mastery journey.

We started by manipulating photos to emphasize contrast, then traced and cut stencils—at first directly off the computer screen (we eventually upgraded to using projectors!). Spray paint quickly became our medium of choice, thanks to its street cred and unmistakable smell. Our little studio began to take form, and we decided to call it Elephant. The story behind the name is another tale, but our first public piece was called Walking to Practice.