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3PC DEMO1
I’m a joker, midnight smoker :)
I’m a joker, midnight smoker :)
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I’m a joker, midnight smoker :) > > > > >
First public release in 3 years. I’m going to start dropping lil sampler tapes of my favorite demos I’ve been making. Some of these might never ever officially be on streaming for various legal and copyright reasons but I fuck with them and I think it’s just good music so take a listen.
Cover art by me obviously.
“Searching 4…” is about introspection and returning to your roots to find yourself.
“SixthSense” is about connection and the talents of a curvaceous woman.
“Dangerous Games” is about regret and how a man can be the mastermind behind his own heartbreak.
Enjoy :)
Thank you.
THE MUSIC I DON’T TALK ABOUT ENOUGH...
Music make me lose control!
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Music make me lose control!
> > > > > Music make me lose control!
A lot of my creative process is musical. I very rarely paint in a vacuum. For a very long time I kept a list of all the songs I listened to while working on a piece, but eventually the pieces got larger and more complex and as the time spent on a work grew more and more I stopped keeping track of all the tracks. Painting I feel is all about rhythm and energy. Sometimes I feel like I could make a beat from the brushstrokes. But what happens when you take five from holding the brush?
In my hiatus from painting I found that the creative energy didn’t disappear, it just bubbled up more and more, and only made my frustration with myself worse and worse. It had to be channeled into something and that something I chose was music. I had played around with musical expression here and there in the past, but because visual art was more my strong suit, I never took the time to really hone any sharp skills as a musician. I figured, well, if I’m not creating visually I can at least create out loud.
Open mic performance of “Slide2Nite” by Big $pence | 1/11/23
Growing up in Atlanta, it’s almost inevitable for you to dabble in music at least once. As a kid I had cello lessons and learned how to play the bass guitar. I always had a fascination and interest in poetry and spoken word. I had friends in the city who sang and rapped and made beats. I even recorded and “released” an 8 song demo tape called QUARTER on my 25th birthday for fun, using the opportunity as an introduction to the recording process and experimenting with different sounds and songwriting styles. In my head, a lot of raw foundation was already there, it was just about taking it somewhere.
Sometimes I feel like recording this demo was the toe in the water I needed to put the battery in my back to really develop a sound and a level of comfort with the music creation process. Over the span of two and a half years, I diverted the muscle I would normally put into painting into music and currently the end result of that effort is 350+ songs, demos, freestyles, verses, and hooks.
And I never talked about any of it.
Outside of some of my closest friends and family, the majority of people in my life don’t even really know how much time I spend writing songs, or crafting hooks, or looking for instrumentals, or making album covers, or planning out music videos. Truth be told, some days I feel that as I’ve tried to legitimize myself more and more as a visual artist and turned my painting and drawing into more of a profession, the music has now become my main artistic release.
So with all that said I’m going to be showcasing some of the music I’ve been channeling my artistic impulses into over the past 2-3 years. Get ready for some diverse sounds, some creative songwriting, and some nice visuals here and there. But at the end of the day, know that it’s all art.
Stay tuned.
Thank you.
THE MIND GAME DECLARATION
What happens to us when the internet dies?
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What happens to us if the internet dies?
> > > > > What happens to us if the internet dies?
Anyone who knows me in real life knows I am anti-AI. Most specifically the application of AI technology to generate (not create) art. In my view, art is supposed to take you somewhere and the journeys that I see offered by these programs are mid indeed. I think what surprises people however is most of my reasons for being against AI are more philosophical than material or economic.
Obviously I do agree that AI is nothing but a blight on the material conditions of the average man, harming both the environment and the economy in ways we will not be able to predict, however what concerns me the most some days is AI’s effects on the mind, heart, and soul.
Allow me to get personal.
Since a very young age I was able to draw. I consider it a God-given talent, but I also believe everyone is born with skills and traits that they naturally intuit towards. You have yours. I have mine. And like any one who is talented in something, I’ve heard time and time again “Oh, I could never do what you do. It takes so much skill!” and forgive me if this is egotistical, but that always felt a bit insensitive.
The talent was intuitive, yes, but the skill was earned. It took a lot of work and practice and learning to get to where I am at and admittedly I know I could be much much better. 10,000 hours. Blood, sweat, tears, late nights, early mornings, lonely days, etc. etc. Not only that, but I’ve seen others get better. I’ve watched people who could not even draw a stick figure train and practice and become competent designers, 3D artists, painters, and photographers.
I’ve always felt one of humanity’s greatest gifts is the ability to be creative. To think outside the box. Maybe I am biased because there are a lot of educators in my family, but the power of the mind was always emphasized to me from a young age. So to me when I hear a lot of the discussions around generative AI and it’s abilities, I almost find it insulting.
Maybe it’s ego talking but the question that keeps bouncing around in my head is why would I believe a machine could out-create me?
To me that sounds like low self-esteem. Poor self-image. An excuse to not be better.
I of course believe a machine could out-produce me, but that’s not the question here. Off the napkin math an AI generative model could create tens of thousands of generated images in the time it took me to finish one painting. But that’s not the race I’m running.
When everything is said and done and the rivers and lakes run dry when image number 43,272 is made, what chiefly concerns me is: were people moved? Were souls touched? Were barriers broken?
Did the output make you wanna change your life? Did the work inspire you and make you want to do the work you’ve been running from? Did it make you question yourself or your upbringing? Did it make you change your perspective on something? Did it keep you up at night tossing and turning wondering about the possibilities of life? Or did you just view and swipe and scroll and keep it pushing?
And I don’t even ask that final question dismissively. It comes from a genuine place of concern.
At 28 years old (at the time of writing), I am an “elder Gen-Z” and therefore one of the last of a dying breed of human being in America that can remember a time in my childhood that was pre-smartphone and pre-social media, but at the same time came of age and into adulthood at a time where the seeds for our modern digital condition were being laid.
Maybe it is that damn phone or maybe it isn’t but I have noticed that as we have shifted into this always-online, always-connected, always-engaged phase of human existence we are all confusedly making our way through now, the human part of things seems to be pushed to the wayside more and more.
Everything has to be optimized and efficient. No room for nuance or grey areas or the natural ebbs and flows of life. Even the subjectivity is objective now. We’ve done this weird roundabout cultural shift where we’ve made everything about the individual, but all we gave the individual was a bunch of boxes to put themselves into. A bunch of boxes to check off before they can be considered a whole being. We’ve become defined by the boxes we choose, not the people we are.
And it just raises more questions for me: Who taught you about yourself? And why, when they gave you that lesson was the conclusion they left you with that you must be commodified and sold to millions of digital strangers for spare parts?
I believe the techno-feudalist billionaires that we have signed our identities away to got us confused.
In the span of two decades we went from thinking that people who spent every day on the computer were weird and antisocial to damn near everyone having a miniature computer in their pockets that they spend all day on. And in the midst of all this, we’ve also failed to recognize that we went from primarily using the internet to interact with people and to share information to primarily using the internet for consumption of entertainment and talking with bots. As of April 2025 the majority of internet traffic is automated and that majority is only increasing. It’s possible that soon you could stake your bets on no one being on the other side of the screen anymore.
And what happens to the world we live in after that? What happens to the humans in a world that takes humanity, processes it, strips it of all its soul and the things that make one human then sells it right back to them? What do they think about? What do they dream about? What inspires them? What moves them?
Artifice breeding artifice. The funk just gets faker. Miss me with that.
I’ve been more moved by any of my experiences in real life with real people in real time than I’ve ever been by any generated-not-created image. I’ve learned more about the world and myself through my lived experiences and the experiences of others than I ever have from anything else. When I need inspiration to paint, or write, or make the music that I don’t talk about enough, I think about my life. My real life. The people around me. The conflicts I’ve had. The beauty I’ve seen. The ugliness I’ve stared at. The word I’ve heard. The pain I’ve felt. The joy I embraced.
Pixels bounce off the screen into the ether every day. Laptops crash. Phones die. Hard drives get corrupted. Wi-Fi signals go down. If it’s one hypothetical I think about more than any other it would be: what would happen if all this just goes *SNAP* tomorrow? All the servers go down. All the social media sites blacked out. The IoT services cease to be. How many of y’all are going to pull up ChatGPT and ask what’s going on?
Cause that would be crazy right?
You’re going to call your mother, or your brother, or your friend, or your neighbor, or turn on the news.
At the end of the day, we are humans living in a world built by us for some. And it’s clear to me that a large chunk of that some do not value humanity. They do not value human experience. They do not value life. They are walking, talking, breathing bots hoping to make real life more and more like a simulated one.
So if anything, know that when you see something from me, there’s no AI involvement. Matter of fact, I’d take the accusation as disrespect to my work, my craft, my process, my moral code, and my humanity. We are in the midst of a potential technological shift that could have unforetold ramifications on culture, religion, art, language, history, the mind, the heart, the soul and much more if there even is anything left. We must maintain our spirits in unspirited times. Cause once you’re dead and gone and your head grows cold, who would you rather have left to tell your ghost stories? Your loved ones? Or the homunculus of Elon Musk, Peter Thiel and Sam Altman?
I know my answer.
A PIECE FOR MY MOTHER
Honor thy mother.
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Honor thy mother.
> > > > > Honor thy mother.
I don’t know where the gifts came from, but I know the gifts are a part of me and I came from my mother. She did not always understand the gifts and neither did I. Even to this day she does not fully understand. But as I gained more understanding of myself, and how the talents I was blessed with shaped the way I understood the world, I used them to show her this part of me in the hopes that she would be able to understand a part of herself.
I do not come from a family of artists. I do not know where these artistic inclinations come from.
My mother can not draw. She can not paint. You will not find her doodling, writing poetry, or doing arts and crafts. She enjoys a museum/art gallery or two, but the furthest she will normally go in creative exploration is some interior decoration and reminiscing on being in the church choir back in Tuskegee as a little girl.
My mother’s real passion is people and their problems. She can walk into a room and within 15 minutes she has found someone, learned their whole life story, and figured out a way in which she can help them better their lives or get out of a bind. And she has been this way for as long as I can remember.
In 1997 my mother graduated from law school and gave birth to me very shortly after. In the 28 years since (at the time of writing), I’ve watched her grow and develop in her career as an attorney and watched as she fought for justice for workers throughout the country and even overseas. I’ve seen her sacrifice blood, sweat, tears, time, and money for people time and time again in the pursuit of fairness for the common man.
Ironically, it took me a while to understand what my mother did. We all have preconceived notions of what law is and how lawyers can be. Hell, even my mother agrees with some of the stereotypes. She herself was partially inspired by tapings of courtroom dramas of the 50s and 60s to become a lawyer. However, as I got older and lived more life and saw the state of the world, I gained more clarity as to what my mother was working so hard for and what it meant to her. Why we have to strive for fairness and equality when the deck is stacked against you. Why you must connect with the people in the communities around you when the world deals you a bad hand. Why there needs to be someone who can ride for you when the house has decided to stop caring.
With this piece (my largest one and my first one in almost a year, mind you), I wanted to honor my mother for her commitment to answering the call in the way she knows best: by understanding people. And to show her that with my gifts, the apple does not fall too far from the tree.
Thank you, Mom.
CREATIV BLOC | AN INTRODUCTION
I fell out my bag and into another one.
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I fell out my bag and into another one.
> > > > > I fell out my bag and into another one.
If I were to put money on it, over the past three or four years I’d say the number one question I would get when catching up with an old friend or in a brief introduction to a new one is “Spence, you paint anything new lately?”
At the time of writing this, the last time I put paint/pastel/pen/marker/pencil/Montana to canvas was June 13, 2024 and the terrifying thought that has been bouncing around in my brain over and over again for the past 11+ months is: I might have fallen out of love with painting.
I might have fallen out of love with painting.
This is not the first time and I doubt it is the last, but this time feels more significant.
In the past when I would fall out of love with painting it would come with more melancholy. A feeling of forlornness like with a lover. Wistfully dreaming back to a time when things felt “right”. The pitfalls of chasing inspiration and a muse.
This time feels more like frustration. Like the energy is building up within me and it needs an alternative outlet. The energy is there but I see the blank canvas and the clean paintbrush and cold easel and it just doesn’t feel like enough. The concepts, ideas, and mockups still come to my head like they always have, but I feel like the concepts, ideas, and mockups were never the problem, it was everything around them. The unfortunate reality is that I don’t think I enjoy being “an Artist™” the way it feels like one is expected to be in this era and I may have bought a little too much into a system I did not fully understand at first.
In the pursuit of legitimizing myself, my art, and my craft in all the ways artists are told to nowadays I found myself feeling less legitimized. I believe the dependency on social media was starting to warp how I viewed my practice and myself as an artist. Everything needed to be documented both precisely and aesthetically. Think of the metrics! Think of the analytics! Think of the audience! Engagement! Engagement! Engagement! This is an attention economy! You are a brand! You must make “content!” Blah, blah, blah.
My issue with it all was the superficiality. When I first created my Instagram account in January 2017 it was purely to serve as a repository. A portfolio of sorts I could quickly send to someone for proof of artistry. “Hey I’m actually painting and creating things instead of claiming it and putting on airs like I feel like half the ‘artists’ in this city do.” I wanted it to be a showcase of skill, talent, passion, and creativity. Followers and likes were the least of my concern. Do y’all SEE what I’m doing with these pigments?
I somewhat blame myself for this frustration...
I think in the midst of trying to get bigger faster, I started to neglect the process. I started to lose sight of some of my original motivations and goals. I decided to try and find my inspiration in a muse or two or three. I sometimes bit off more than I could comfortably chew in the balancing act that comes with having a career that funds your passions.
At first, art was something just as natural to me as walking and running. I can vividly remember being 5 years old and getting disciplined by my father for drawing on the walls of my childhood home in Gresham Park. I can remember going to church with my grandmother (Rest in Power, Clotee) in Columbus, GA and her packing a miniature notebook, a pen, and a sandwich bag full of green grapes cause she knew my preschool aged brain would not be able to pay attention for the length of the morning service as I fidgeted around in my lil-man-church-suit and sketched away. I can remember all the time I would spend designing clothes and sneakers and masks and cartoon characters and cars in the margins of the notes for my U.S. Government & Economics course freshman year of high school, much to the chagrin of the teacher as it would distract neighboring students on occasion (Rest in Power, Mr. Jackson).
The artistry was always there, it was just never focused, or properly channeled into something. Like walking and running at a very high level but heading nowhere at all. And so it started to feel like the further I walked and the faster I ran, the further I got away from what gave me the urge to walk and run in the first place, and the more fatigued my creative muscles became.
Forgive the melodrama but with the addition of rose colored blinders on, I missed the forest and the trees, and now I sit here eight years later lost in the woods.
CREATIV BLOC exists as a documentation of my metaphorical journey back to civilization. Whether I must follow the rivers and lakes I’m used to, the northernmost star directing me towards the Old Man, or just hope and pray that my GPS signal goes through, the goal of CREATIV BLOC is to showcase the winding and haphazard process of getting back in your bag.
To paraphrase a quote from (arguably) the greatest basketball player of all time, there is always more than one way to move past a wall. Sometimes the wall is tangible, sometimes the wall is in our head, but with enough trial, error, and creativity, no wall is insurmountable.
Call it a blog, call it a journal, call it a vault. Whatever you would like to call it, with CREATIV BLOC the mission is an effort in pushing one's boundaries and limitations creatively. Some of the contents of CREATIV BLOC will be longform like this, some of it will be shortform, some of it will be video, some of it will be audio. Some of it will be personal and vulnerable and introspective. Some of it will be funny, quick, and entertaining (to me at least lol). Sometimes it will be raw. Sometimes it will be highly polished. From music, to visual art, to design, to fashion, to poetry, the bounds are nonexistent. Just know that regardless of what form of media you see in this space as I fumble around the thicket of my mind once again: it will be creative.
Stay tuned.
