“Growing up, I had an artistic eye. I liked to draw and color, but drawing always seemed unfinished to me. Like, there had to be more than that. One night, my family had a paint night. My mom bought a lot of small canvases, and she asked my siblings and me to paint what family meant to us. I did a painting with ‘love’ in cursive, and it had different colors in the background – the colors of our living room. That was my first time painting; I think I was in tenth grade. And I just started painting from there. I used all of the canvases we had left over from the paint night. Then, I started painting on anything I could find, like cardboard from shoeboxes. And I’d use pencils and bobby pins to apply the paint.

I didn’t start taking my art seriously until I got to Jackson State. When I noticed that I could sell my paintings, I created my brand ‘Young Fly Art’ in 2017. I wanted to make the brand an actual business, so I made business cards and started going to events around the city of Memphis. And I’ve been expanding my art. Instead of just canvases, I also paint murals, and I’m getting into more graphic art like logos, album covers and flyers.

In the next five years, I want to open my own studio where I can teach people about art, host art parties and have an area where I can do tattoos. It will be a place where people can come create young, fly art with me.”

– Yasin, junior graphic design major from Memphis, Tenn.

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