Obsessive Formatting

The Origins

This page is the scaffold behind my work.

From Michoacán to Muffins

Before I ever called myself an artist, I was singing Pancho Barraza’s Mi Enemigo El Amor on the concrete steps of my grandparents' home in Michoacán, Mexico. It was 1999. I was five years old.

To my family, it was a sweet moment—another curious child lost in his own world. I don’t remember it directly, but I grew up hearing the story over and over. A child already wired with fascination.

My father had immigrated to California at 17. By the early 2000s, he had a life there, and I followed. I was born in Michoacán—“the lucky one,” they’d say. At age six or seven, I arrived in the U.S. The shift was surreal: from chasing pigs to chasing muffins on airplanes. From dirt roads to pop culture and PlayStation. It was disorienting, exhilarating—and formative.

The Spark and the Search

My first formal art experience came around age seven or eight at Napa Valley Language Academy, with an art teacher named Leo. It didn’t last long. In 2005, we moved to Sonoma County for work. That’s where I started calling myself an artist.

The new school had no visual arts—just flute and violin. I was disappointed, but I internalized it. Then I turned to the internet. I typed “art” into Google. That’s how I found graffiti. I was ten years old.

Calligraphy became obsession. And obsession is the correct word. One memory stands out: in sixth grade, a student turned in a math assignment under the name “Batista” (a WWE reference). The teacher made him write his real name 100 times on the board. To most kids, it was funny. To me, it was foundational. I started doing the same. Writing my name. Over and over. Testing variations. Perfecting letters. The signature I use today came from that moment.

Eventually, I needed a tag name. First “NEON,” then “ZERC.” It wasn’t an acronym. It was identity. I remember sitting down and telling myself: you can’t stop until you find a name. “ZERC” became the name of the voice in my hands, my sketches, and the world that I built in my blackbook, stencils, mop markers. I consumed tags from Europe and New York and San Francisco, dreaming of putting mine next to theirs.

Digital Walls

High school gave me access to formal art classes—but I was already on my own wavelength. I wasn’t a student of structure. I was a student of curiosity.

My father bought me a used HP laptop. On it was full access to Web 2.0. I discovered GIMP and GIMP 2.0—open-source versions of Photoshop and Illustrator. I dove in. Digital layering. Color theory. Texture mapping. I built entire compositions without knowing what “composition” meant. That laptop became my wall. My universe.

Eventually, I was encouraged to apply to the ArtQuest Program at Santa Rosa High School. I resisted. It felt too late. Too formal. I reluctantly joined the Digital Arts track, not because I wanted to study art, but because I wanted to learn to build websites. My teachers—Monica Garcia and John Sappington—noticed. They gave me space to think, create, resist. Their nudges weren’t loud, but they were pivotal.

In 2013, I won the Spring Showcase poster competition. $250. The first time I was paid as an artist. I didn’t want to cash the check—I wanted to frame it. I did cash it. And bought a small Wacom tablet with the money. I still use it today.

The Atelier Years

After graduating, I briefly considered art school. I didn’t go. I knew I’d fail—not academically, but emotionally. I wasn’t ready to sit in a classroom and wait to be told what to care about.

Instead, I chose work. Factory jobs. Long shifts. But a plan was forming. Why pay $50,000 for an art degree when I could spend $50,000 building a studio?

In 2016, with my father’s help, I began to build a 12x12 studio inside his garage. Concrete foundation. Insulated walls. Workstations for design, photography, music, and heat-press merch. It was scrappy. It was sacred.

In 2017, I bought my first camera. I started photographing concerts, car shows, street scenes, events. I quit my job and gave myself to the work. In 2018, I relocated to Richmond, California. I found a converted storage unit—10x20 feet—and asked if i could drill into the walls, they said “Yes“. That space became my next atelier. I built a 10x6 foot recording booth by hand: mass-loaded vinyl, 703 board, acoustic insulation.

I was sleeping in my car. On the beach. On studio plywood. Photographing Neph the Pharaoh, P-Lo, OMB Peezy, and underground Bay Area talent like SweetStank, Shawneef, Calioto, and others. I wasn’t chasing the dream—I was curating it. I wasn’t on a career trajectory. I was building a world with no blueprint and no budget.

Collapse and Rebuild

In 2019, I registered an LLC, a marketing concept with raw creative energy but no clear identity yet. Then came COVID.

By 2021, the momentum had cracked. I spent more time resting that year than I had from 2016–2020 combined. It wasn’t wasted. Stillness gave birth to structure. And from 2022–2024, something began to take shape—quietly, obsessively:

Stressful Squares.

Why This Matters

This archive, this rhythm, this relentless formatting—
was never about aesthetic output.
It was about survival. Memory. Meaning.

This isn’t an origin story.
It’s infrastructure. A field report. A methodology built over years of compulsion.

And if you’ve made it this far—
you’re already inside it.