We were lucky to catch up with Zakriya Rabani recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Zakriya, thanks for joining us today. Can you open up about a risk you’ve taken – what it was like taking that risk, why you took the risk and how it turned out?

In the Spring of 2011 I graduated from Lely High School in Naples, FL and I had already agreed to attend the University of Florida for their Summer B session to pursue a major in Athletic Training. At the time, I was shocked at the idea of leaving my hometown and all of my friends to attend a college that I knew nothing about. I didn’t know where UF was located, I didn’t know anything about college in general other than high school teachers telling me I was “supposed to go to college”. In fact, the only reason I ever applied to any university was because my English teacher was relentless and forced me to apply. My family’s tax bracket made me eligible for free state testing and college application waivers and I made the cut to acquire Florida Bright Futures so it would have been a waste of free money to not at least try. None of my immediate family members ever received higher education, at least not in the U.S. so I seriously did not understand a single thing about college, how to attend, what to do there or what to expect at all – hell I had never driven that far north in Florida. I had been to Orlando and Tampa as a kid but I had never even heard of Ocala let alone Gainesville.

As that Summer came and went I found myself loving being on my own, drawing a lot in a sketchbook crafted by my aunt Teri and making my own way through the university campus by longboarding everywhere but by the end of Summer B my grades really suffered. I still hadn’t grasped what being a college student meant, I needed to become accountable but I was too busy missing my friends and being social at all of the summer events.

In the last week of the Summer B session I was at the Oaks Mall in Gainesville, FL walking around and I walked by the Buckle storefront window. On display were many T-shirts for sale made by a variety of surf companies. All I could think was, how cool would it be to be an artist for these t-shirts? How hard could it be? Does UF have an arts school? Can you major in art?

Being an athlete helped me understand that if you dedicate yourself to something, if you practice a technique, you can gain a skill set. I knew this, I was good at being good at things – if that makes sense. And I loved the freedom art presented me.

So right there in that moment, staring into the Buckle storefront window at the overpriced surf t-shirts, I came to the conclusion that if I wanted to achieve greatness at something that it would require real work ethic, real dedication, I would need to commit myself – because I knew that was among the bare minimum to become successful. But I also wanted happiness, I wanted to work for love and love to work. As I stared more and more at this particular Billabong shirt, I told myself I would switch my major from Athletic Training to something in the Arts.

So, I focused on drawing. I had some natural experiences with drawing from my imagination, doodling in class, replicating surf brands like Volcom and Famous Stars and Stripes but in reality I had little to no experience. The only thing I had backing me up was that I randomly took an art class in the last semester of high school. The art teacher saw some talent in me and actually invited me to his advanced art class where we could essentially draw whatever we wanted and for three months until I graduated all I did was draw.

I left the Oaks Mall that day and went to the College of Art & Art History at the University of Florida. I walked right into the academic advisors office, luckily the advisor was taking walk-ins and she wasn’t busy. Her name was Dana Myers, I expressed to her my interest in becoming an art major and she told me that it was not an easy path – that technically I was already behind. I said I would do whatever it takes to make it up and be a good student. And I meant it, because I realized that if I didn’t make that change I would drop out. It was a risk I needed to take. However, she needed to check my current grades and GPA before making any moves. Unfortunately she could not see my final Summer B exam grades as they had not yet been graded, and I didn’t even know what they were, meaning my current GPA would change. She needed to know these results but for some reason she decided to push my paperwork through anyways.

Perhaps she went on a hunch that the test results would be good enough and wouldn’t hurt my GPA. Whatever her reasons were, I was glad of her decision.

To this day I am still uncertain as to why Dana let me transfer into the program, it was not an easy program and it required a 2-year portfolio application to be accepted into one of their core focuses – drawing, painting, ceramics, sculpture, printmaking, graphic design and more. Maybe she needed more enrollment, maybe she saw something in me, or maybe I just caught her at the right time and the right place.

Halfway through the Fall semester of 2011 I was told I needed to check in with my academic advisor to prepare for the Spring semester, so I scheduled a meeting and went. When I arrived at Dana’s office, the first time I had been there since I met her in the Summer, I was met with anger.

“Where have you been? Why have you not seen me sooner? I have emailed you several times to meet me, we have serious things to discuss”

I had no idea what she was talking about. I was slowly becoming a better student but I didn’t really understand emails so I rarely checked my school email account. I did eventually look back through my emails, although I never found anything from her.. but that didn’t help me at that moment. Dana went on to express that my Summer B grades were awful and have made my GPA plummet to the point where the University had a right to terminate me as a student. She wanted to see me sooner because I would have been placed on Academic Probation for that Fall semester and we could have put a plan together. But since we were already past the halfway point of the Fall it was too late and she wasn’t sure if the university would just terminate me anyways. I expressed that I had no idea and that I was doing well in my current courses so those should help my gpa moving forward. She frowned and sighed – “you need to finish this semester with flying colors and the moment you come back in the Spring you need to see me so I can place you on Academic Probation.” I told her I would do my best and I would see her then.

When I saw Dana in the Spring of 2012 she told me she was surprised to see me and seemed reluctant that the University of Florida hadn’t stepped in to terminate me as a student. She went on to say as long as your email works, your ID number works, your class RFID card works, then I should continue being a student and that she would place me on Academic Probation.

Everything seemed to be working as we had planned but just three weeks into the Spring semester of 2012 I ran into another issue or rather slid into it. I was longboarding down a campus road called Stadium Road, it was a hill that the Ben Hill Griffin Football Stadium sat on and it was paved with such smooth asphalt that it made riding my longboard feel like riding on a cloud. I had skated it everyday throughout the Summer and Fall so I knew it well, but for whatever reason this was the day I made a quick decision to turn left from the road to get onto the sidewalk, I used a sliding technique to slow myself down and used it to coordinate into the left turn. It felt amazing to reduce my speed into a power slide move but during the maneuver my wheels glazed over some fine gravel, almost like sand and boom, my board slid out from under me and I fell. I was almost at a complete stop before I wiped out so I had a bunch of momentum peaking in the left turn, that momentum actually made me fall backwards. Instinctively I used my feet to try and catch myself before impact, my left foot made contact first with the road, only to land on a little square street reflector – the kind that are white on one side and red on the other to help direct traffic – causing my body weight to fall awkwardly onto my left leg. POP.

Luckily I fell outside of the university’s infirmary and a fellow student in full suit came to help scoop me off the street. I could only get on my right foot to hop but every time I hopped I felt this jarring pain in my left ankle. I asked the guy to set me down and ask the infirmary for a wheelchair, I told him I would wait.

About an hour later I found out I had a clean break in my fibula, just above the ball of my ankle.

Soon after this I moved back to Naples, FL – I was approved for a Medical Withdrawal which meant no harm would come to my GPA and as soon as I was healed I could come back to resume my studies. For the next eight months I worked as a tennis racquet stringer until my leg healed and I also became a certified Tennis Professional at the Players Club & Spa in Lely Resort. In that time I managed to break my wrist from skating down the Goodland Bridge which prolonged my medical withdrawal, I was arrested, I started dating, I helped take care of my little brother as my moms alcoholic habits worsened and I was offered a salaried job teaching tennis. It felt like I was a screw up and that I didn’t need to go back to school, like I shouldn’t go back. All my friends were in Naples, I was starting to play beach volleyball and loving it, my brother was there, I had a real adult job offer, maybe that was good enough?

But something felt toxic, something felt off about the whole idea of staying home.

“Wise people learn from their mistakes but wiser people learn from other people’s mistakes.” These are words that have rung around in my head since the day my high school English teacher said them to me. Why couldn’t I do both? I needed to be better than my mistakes, I had been making such bad decisions and I could sense where those patterns and habits would lead me.

I went back to UF in the Fall of 2012, I had missed 8 months of schooling, two full semesters. I managed to find housing with a graduate student who was also once a student of my high school English teacher and for that entire Fall semester I snuck into Broward Dining to just to eat. Meal plans were too expensive and I hadn’t learned the art of meal prepping yet. And for the next three years I took an extra class or two in every semester just to get back on track and graduate in my appropriate class of 2015. I started the university’s first beach volleyball club, met the love of my life and got invited to a show at the Atlantic Center for the Arts annual college fine arts exhibition. I was 1 of 3 student artists invited from the state of Florida.

After graduating from UF in 2015 I went on to graduate school and received a Master of Fine Arts from the University of South Florida, practiced art and became the Studio Coordinator of Sculpture at Anderson Ranch Arts Center in Colorado. And now, eight years later I have become Jacksonville University’s first-ever Gallery Director for their Alexander Brest Gallery.

I couldn’t be happier to have taken all of the risks that have led me to now and I look forward to what the future may hold.

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

I tend to tell people that I am a first generation human. See, I was given a different last name than both of my parents making me the first Rabani in our entire family. Only my younger brother Jake shares the Rabani last name. I grew up as a Southwest Floridian with the influence of the relentless repetitive nature of the blue-green crashing waves, the push for strategic explosions of energy in the world of sport and competition, as well as an obsession of contending with present-day educational and institutional structures. ​

I have exhibited nationwide in galleries, museums, competitions and public art spaces, I have shown at the Aspen Art Museum, Aspen, CO; Anderson Ranch Arts Center, Snowmass Village, CO; ArtFields, Lake City, South Carolina; Contemporary Art Museum, Tampa, FL; Franconia Sculpture Park, Shafer, MN; Foundry Art Center, St. Charles, MO; Indianapolis Art Centre, Indianapolis, IN; WARPHAUS, Gainesville, FL; Atlantic Center for the Arts, New Smyrna Beach, FL. I was a resident at the Franconia Sculpture Park in Shafer, MN and was the 2019 ArtFields Best Installation Performance Winner.

By the age of 24, I achieved national rankings in both the sports of Tennis and Beach Volleyball, a MFA from the University of South Florida and a BFA from the University of Florida. I founded two separate collegiate beach volleyball organizations and have extreme amounts of passion, mysteries from of my Asian heritage, all the while always having a love for sharing information and experiences through storytelling and teaching.

Have any books or other resources had a big impact on you?

I read Andre Agassi’s book “Open” when my leg was broken in 2012. One of the many takeaways I got from it was whether you love doing something or not if you are good at it you can use it to get what you want in life. Agassi was once the greatest tennis player in the world and is one of the best American tennis players of his time but he talks about how he didn’t like playing tennis. It was forced upon him and took up most of his life resulting in him not getting a good education. But as he got older he realized he was good at playing tennis, that through his countless practice sessions he mastered the techniques of swinging a tennis racquet so he instead of sulking about not liking tennis he used his skill set to become successful and happy in life.

Looking back, are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?

I wish I known more about grant writing, proposal writing, application processes, exhibition calls, how to photograph artwork, how to market or showcase artwork, email etiquette, how to approach a gallery, what does the underbelly of the art world actually look like? How to network and make connections.

As an art student you are presented with prompts to make art which are eventually critiqued by other student artists and fine arts faculty all of which happens within a “bubble”. You are taught the schools way of making and showing art but I have found that just being confident in your work can take you places alone. Observe, absorb and strategically use what you’ve learned when you need to.      

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.zakriyarabani.com/
• Instagram: @flow_zak_studio
• Other: https://foundwork.art/artists/zakriyarabani

Image Credits
Jake Rabani Emma Bishop