So for me it was like a great way or a vehicle, To sort of showcase the different people of Colorado and all the different backgrounds that we have, all different stories that we have, all the different experiences that we have, and bring them together in one place at one time through the arts.

This project is a project that I got commissioned by the city and the airport to install.

It's a sculpture piece called “Its Not What You Take Its What You Bring Back”.

And basically it's all about the endless journey that we're on and the bags that we use to basically carry the things that we find valuable.

I use bags mainly as a DNA, mainly because as bags we carry things that are valuable.

So like when you're going to a destination or a different country or a trip, you carry the things that you think you may need.

And then when you're at that destination, you grow, you gain experience, and then when you come back, you have to figure out like what to take back with you because you can't take everything with you.

And then another takeaway that I did was actually collect all the different cans that I used to spray each bag.

So there's 13 different colors, sunrises, sunsets and use all these different cans.

On the process of spraying it.

But I also collected all the empty cans so that people can actually save these for little keepsakes.

After being selected, I just put out a call and put up a form where people could go online and submit their a picture of their bag, a story about the bag, what they you know, what it meant to them, what they did with the bag.

And then I went through all the different submissions and basically started collecting all the bags that I thought were really good for this project, because every bag on the actual sculpture is upcycled through people around Colorado.

People around Colorado are the ones that actually created the piece in a way.

And with those different pieces of luggage that everyone donated comes with the story.

So all these different stories are now part of that public art piece.

And that's what I thought was really exciting, is to have a public art piece that people can actually go to the airport and say, Hey, this is a piece that I'm a part of.

It's not like a piece of metal that was casted or plastic that was molded.

It's actual upcycled luggage from people's attics and different neighborhoods and different people in Colorado put together.

It's been about two and a half, three years of the whole process.

So it's been a long time since actually being awarded the project.

But at the end, I think it's going to be really rewarding to see everything really come together from, you know, me sketching it out on, you know, just a napkin to telling the fabricators what I wanted to do, to telling the engineers and see this is what I want to see happen, to actually seeing everything being fabricated, people donating, and then actually everything being installed.