Hi! I love you. I hope wherever you’re reading this you can feel the warmth of the sun on your skin.
TAY TRBO
I’m a 6’3” entity, born a creative, and an artist by nature, because all who get dressed are artists. I am a lover, especially a lover of all things that create the feeling of being connected to something bigger than ourselves. I enjoy being able to create things in many mediums- beautiful and messy, decorating my body and others’ with permanent art, making clothes that make us see ourselves in a new light, and helping awaken others to their gifts and soul’s purpose. I have been drawing since before I could write my first name; my parents knew they were doomed since then. I am a very passionate person. I have always felt oceans in my chest, but then I learned how to surf.
“She is water: powerful enough to drown you, soft enough to cleanse you, deep enough to save you.”
Other than pioneering new templates of love and creative expression, I think I found my “calling” at a very young age. My mom was very diligent in her pursuit of motherhood. She always made time for us to color together, every day. I told her I wanted to start dressing myself (probably at a way younger age than most kids) and she happily let me, even if that meant I was in a bathing suit and crown to go to the doctor’s office. We spent a lot of time outside and we spent a lot of time in the water. I would cry and she would hold space for me to express myself. All of that added up quite accurately to who I am today. But with all that being said, that part of me took the back seat for a while. I also grew up playing sports, shocker. That took the reigns for the majority of my life thus far. Basketball was a vehicle for so much good in my life (lifelong mentors, examples of what I never want to be, friends that turned family, no student loans, incredible memories, the list is endless and I am eternally appreciative)- while simultaneously creating a false sense of self. I came to the beautiful Kingdom of Hawaiʻi on scholarship to play (and later, graduate with a Bachelors in Fine Art. Go bows). When that chapter of my life ended due to injury, I was thrown into this time of my life where I had no choice but to lean into the chaotic part of the creative process where everything is up in the air, because I took it all apart, just to put it back together in a new way. And by everything, I mean everything– almost every moving part. I did not change who I was, I just got rid of who I am not. Angels appeared in the form of strangers, clients, teachers and friends. Lots of learning happened, and lots of unlearning happened. I barely slept, I dreamed hard, and was knee deep in a flow of creating new pieces of all mediums and subject matters from everything I had suppressed and was told to make quiet my whole life. It was intense, almost purge-like. For what felt like the first time, I met, really got to know and embrace the woman I am when I am alone. The raw form of who I truly am on a soul level. The times where I’ve had no choice but to be present in my body, truly feel where I am at, and pivot from there, have been the most instrumental to– everything really, but especially– my art. That is how I translate my feelings to make some sense, anyway. I learn in these liminal spaces, time and time again, that transformation will only take place when you are willing to tell yourself the truth.
My work is a colorful collection of the beauty that surrounds my life, from the ocean to the earth to the beautiful people I get to love. In more recent years, the symbiotic relationship humans have with land has been incredibly evident and in the, rightfully deserved, spotlight. Which has obviously inspired the f*** out of me. Mother Earth is to be respected, and this respect for her makes respect for self and others possible.
I love being a woman and I love being able to showcase the magic that we just naturally are in my art.
And I love being able to feel things that are deeper and more profound than what the English language can make sense of. Being able to experience those moments in life is just extremely poetic in general, sometimes too poetic for words. So I use color. I LOVE color.
“Some people were born more able to see the beauty, the miracles, the joy, the sweetness and the radiance of this beautiful earth. This does not mean you don’t see the other stuff, it just means your job is to help other people remember and tune into what is light. Don’t ever lose that.” —Maryam Hasnaa
When you feel yourself breaking down, may you break open instead. May every experience in your life be a door that opens your heart, expands your understanding and leads you to freedom. May you allow love to work itself out- and when it arrives, may you surrender yourself to it.
I wish you love, I wish you water. Happy youʻre along for this ride with me.