A me just for me: Tech Nix

Slabs of snow slide down slanted glass windows. The room is silent beyond the scratch of pencil on paper. A student sits perched on a high stool, tucked into a paint swab covered table. Chin down. 

Third and seventh period, every single day. When Tech Nix settles in Sunny Neater or Brian Wildeman’s Gordon Parks classrooms, they become who they love most.

Tech the oil painter. Tech the illustrator. Tech the block-painting, paper-cutting, fabric-embroidering artist. 

But at-school Tech is not at-home Tech. 

At-home Tech was the middle schooler who started sketching and doodling their thoughts in notebooks after class hours, learning that, for them, one picture can communicate more than a thousand words ever could. 

At-home Tech was the high school student who, locked inside during quarantine, filled the small square grids of their art account on instagram, and who later displayed and sold their work on Redbubble through a self-made website.

“Just for me,” they say, when describing their art, and their life as an artist that isn’t so easily spotted on school grounds. The “Just for me” Tech who sits alone in their bedroom, working in total silence beyond the scratch of pencil on paper. Chin down. Every single day. 

For Tech, art is a tool for political and social expression — a declaration of identity and passion. It is less of an activity than a lifestyle — a language that they can speak in company, or alone. 

At-home Tech may look a little different than at-school Tech — they couldn’t be spotted in action through classroom doors when roaming through GPAH hallways daily. But “Just for Me” Tech is always present. Basking under the sunlight of slanted glass windows, or hiding under the worn pages of an old sketchbook. Either way, Tech gets to become who they love most. All it takes are a few supplies.