So those drawings were collected as-is in Lingerie Wrestling?Some of the original drawings were included, but I added a lot of new ones to expand the collection. I’d been showing my work to various art directors, and when Masakazu Takei—who was the president of Little More at the time—saw it, he immediately said, “This is really good. Let’s make it into a book!” He even suggested doing an exhibition at Parco. That became the first real turning point for me.
What do you mean by “first step”?A guy named Taylor McKimens who saw the Lingerie Wrestling book reached out to me saying he really liked my art and was hoping I’d join this group exhibition (“Stranger Town”, 2005) he was putting together at a gallery called Dinter Fine Art in New York. He said he didn’t have the budget to cover my travel expenses or the shipping costs of my art, but something about it just felt right, so I said I was in. I had no idea how any of this was going to turn out, but nevertheless I set off for New York on my own dime with an assortment of drawings big and small that I’d drawn over the years.
The gallery turned out to be a tiny spot on the third floor of a mixed-use building, and I had to put up the art I wanted to display myself.