We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Elliot Bless a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Elliot, thanks for joining us today. We’d love to hear about when you first realized that you wanted to pursue a creative path professionally.

Growing up I would watch my dad design posters, draw portraits and illustrate caricatures, and at the time I didn’t realize it but I was absorbing an appreciation for not just the art and the output, but also the process. I can’t pinpoint an exact age when I knew I wanted to pursue a professional artistic path – I was just always interested in making things and sharing them with the people around me, and as I developed my crafts and my style I knew it was something I would share in a professional capacity forever.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I started my Art journey solely with writing and taking an interest in rap around the 5th/6th grade, and it got serious for me the second I heard my voice recorded on tape. That’s right, cassette tape! haha my mom was an early childhood social worker in Spanish Harlem, and one of her classrooms had this Califone CAS1500 Cassette Player & Recorder that she let me “borrow”. I hung it on a hanger in my closet at home and recorded over blank cassettes, playing instrumentals that I downloaded off of Kazaa in the background, and that was all she wrote, I was hooked. I had a love for art from watching my dad create, and seeing my mom scrapbook, and I knew I couldn’t draw as well as him or be as crafty as my mom, but I still wanted to impress them with what I could do.

Initially, it was all about just being witty and saying something that sounded catchy, but the more I studied hip-hop, the more I wanted to align my story with something of significance and inspiration. I began to care more about being thoughtful about the conversation that I wanted shaped around my art and the projects I was involved in.

Today, everything that I produce means something:

– My music is a vessel for resilience and perseverance.

– My visual art is a representation of my black and puerto rican heritage and the communities that shaped me. In all of my pieces I use a style that I’ve coined as “circulo”, which means “Circle” in Spanish and is a homage to my late Puerto Rican Grandmother who I was extremely close with. Every piece is made up circles, ovals and/or shapes derivative of a circle as a metaphor for the saying, “everything comes full circle”, tying back to my heritage.

– The streetwear brand that I have with my friends, Study Hall NY is about empowering our culture to thrive off of continual education.

My focus today is less on popularity and virality, and more on purpose and connection. Did I make something, that made you FEEL.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

The most rewarding thing for me right now is when I’m working on something and my two-year old daughter gravitates towards it. If she starts bopping her head to a song of mine or if she loves a new art piece, that’s the golden ticket for me. Nothing in the world can beat that.

And also this . Creating pieces that bubble up to someone mentioning me in a space where I may not have been previously will always be the most rewarding. To me, it means that I’m making things that have lasting value; records people think about when their headphones are off, and art pieces people want to adorn their house and safe spaces with.

What can society do to ensure an environment that’s helpful to artists and creatives?

Buy art directly from the artist. Share art that connects with you in an intentional way; tell how the piece SPOKE to you.

Those 2 things alone can sustain artistry.

Contact Info:

• Website: elliotbless.art
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/elliotbless/
• Other: TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@elliotbless