Torta & Tequila

My name is Chase. I specialize in branding, logo design, identity, art direction and portrait, sports, and concert photography. This is a comprehensive website of everything I've done over the years, from branding to marketing campaigns to photography to art exhibitions. Everything, including the website itself, was created by me unless otherwise stated. Everything here is also grossly under-budgeted, and I'll be overcharging for what they did to the Cold Crush..

Bet a hunnid, win a hunnid westside get the money..

Leimert Park Juneteenth Festival

Branding & Art Direction

2023

(clip courtesy of Malik Baker)

(photo courtesy of Ann Marie Clark)

Tortaandtequila Youtube Channel

Logos - Art Direction

2023-

The Zeta Omega Fraternity

Branding - Identity - Art Direction - Promotion - Social Media

“Til the year 3000”

Warren Hall

Fall 2013

Locals Only

Spring 2014

OASIS

2013-2015

Fairfax Football

Branding - Uniform Design - Photography - Social Media

2018-2019

Inconagraphy

We moved away from the standard catalog iconography most high schools are forced to use. Instead we went with bespoke logos including a graphic representation of the oldest school building in Los Angeles the Rotunda.

FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS

Game day cards.

Instagram story content.

The cards colors coordinate with the uniform selection.

Uniform design

With Fairfax High School Football getting a new head coach after 20 years it was time to update the uniforms. We went away from the black and dove into the schools original colors of Cardinal & Gold.

Premium Sport Los Angeles

2014-2019

Augusta Hawkins High School

2014-2016

Inglewood High

2019

11 Deep Sports

2016

I designed logos for Premium Sports LA, Augusta Hawkins High School, and Inglewood High School that establish a strong presence for being the best football in southern California. Premium Sports LA is the number one 7on7 club team in the nation. In only its fourth year of existence, Augusta Hawkins High School was a game away from the LA City Championship in 2016 with 12 future D1a players. Inglewood High School, with a newly hired coaching staff, will be looking to repeat its 12-1 record and looking to go all the way to the state championship in future seasons. All of these logos are custom typefaces. Premium sports a "9" for the "P" and a "1" for the "I" to signify the premium gas they serve at 7on7 tournaments. The Hawkins script logo was hand-drawn and worn on the helmets on their run to the City Semifinals. The Inglewood high "Wood" logo with the negative space of the "W" being the spear the team wore on as helmet decals. 11 Deep Sports was based in Reno Nevada and we took the silhouette of the Sierra Nevada Mountain that border the city to the west and imposed it in the lettering. The alternate logo is a XID or "11 Deep" in a square like barrowing the style of the Mountain West Conferance logo. These logos have all been used in significant format settings. Hawkins being on ESPN and the Premium logo being a part of the Adidas Grassroots football organization.

Slap Media

Logos - Art Direction

2018-2019

Slap Media is an underground music outlet for up and coming artists in the greater Los Angeles area. I was able to update the logo and create an animation for their "woodurather" youtube product where they ask rappers would you rather questions. At the same time, they roll and smoke a backwood. I also created a video frame using a flip on the name SLAP, another name for a sticker. I flipped the USPS mailing label, a "SLAP by S.L.A.P. for the outlet to release video clips on their social media platforms. I also created the cover for the weekly Slap Pack on NTS radio 2 with DJ Kita.

DTMWIN

Logos - Art Direction

2014-2015

Ray Darko

Logos - Art Direction

2016-

Indie Raheem

Logos - Art Direction

2014-2017

The Jiveass Project

Typography

One rainy night in 2015

Every year April is special to me. It's like a birthday. It is a birthday lol But there’s a group of us that think about April 3rd being special or maybe they don’t I don’t know. What I do know is that on April 3rd, 2015 I threw my first exhibition. HELLA PHOTOS. The thesis was along the lines of what does it look like when a large group of friends do a bunch of hood rat shit with each other for four years. Then I did another show, then another, and was supposed to do another this year. 5 years later. But the world is like trippin so we can’t do that. Shameful shit. Anyways this was always going to be the last of this series. It’s like that period of Lil’ Waynes career when he sat in the studio and rapped all the raps he had written down to free himself from them so he could grow as an artist. Today was it, and today will be it for this. I’m closing up shop on Jiveass, a college project that turned into 9 years of documented drunkassness lol. But like all things at some point, we have to move on. This is from the Jiveass Portfolio published in 2016 “Jiveass is a dilemma, something that I worked so hard to figure out then sort of came out of nowhere, the logo and the name were both stumbled upon and became something I love, it’s crazy how that works. I think about when I came with creative breakthroughs, sitting on my friends beat honda outside of speed zone wondering about life and thinking shit ain't nothing I’m doing is working. I got to get out of this shit, out of LA, away from these same people. I went to Miami, ran away from issues, but there is where it started a seed planted in my head from my friend John randomly stating something was ‘bulljive’ then having that float around my head until it was shouted out: ‘Mom, don’t give me that jive!’ The word infiltrated my lexicon being used over and over again. The crazy thing is when I started college at East Bay at 23 being old as hell compared to the people I hung around with, I never cared, but ‘Jive’ was something from way before ever I was around, and I was the older guy using older slang. I used the title ‘A Jiveass Production’ almost as a joke and having a photo of Gil Scott-Heron and a voice-over from black dynamite as the closing credit for my first animation Deadbeat Supermen. That was it, and it was about a year before I came up with a logo, but ever since then, I used that as the title of everything I created. Mainly because I was sick and tired of people using their first and last names as their design companies. The logo came from a rush shirt I did in the fall of 2013 Warren Hall what most people thought was a landmark for the city of Hayward was blown up I happened to take photos of it and put it on a shirt. Sitting in senior project class doing absolutely nothing I decided to vector one of the photos, and it sat for a month. Then I thought wait put some paramount like stars around that badboy and that logo is you. And that was it. And the things that came out of that the Degenerates, the Art show, the photoshoots, the clothes. I love you Jiveass, just like I love Beasto. Beasto was there before I realize I was creative, sitting at work doodling and randomly draw something that I just kept drawing for a year and a half. Jiveass and Beasto the creations I’ve birthed. This book is that journey the photos are of my friends and people that joined me for the ride at the beginning of this journey, and for all, I know this could just be a college phase that fades away in the next couple years, hopefully not, but who knows. But this is the Jiveass Productions portfolio from 2010-2016 enjoy.” And now it has faded. I’m leaving these years behind, leaving Jiveass alone or should I say complete, an unblemish legacy a lot of dopeassness and devoid of bitchassness. Love you big dawg..

1. DeadBeat Superman Animation (an animated short about Kal El and bad decsions

2. The Diner It's a real cold day in hell, like I had a dream of making this concept come true. Imagine opening a resturant heavily weighted on in the person dining experiance in 2018

3. DTMWIN - DTMWIN

4. Fear/Love Spectrum - Ray Darko

5. There were a couple nights in college when I could have created a bunch of dope shit. Instead I went out and drank with the homeës instead(kanye strug)

6. the Shop an ill fated attempt at making clothes. Shit was whack in all honesty but I appreciate who supported

7. Big Willies: A photo series of broke college students and their beat to shit buckets

8. Gold Coast Tour = {4rm here 2 fame} and byke

9. Memory Lane: homeës sitting around playing dominos talking shit

10. Memory Lane I put this later in this list because my actors didn't read the script before filming and it ended up being terrible LMAO and my professor hated me so much because I didn't care about my grade at all(in gradaute school taking an elective p/np) she waited until after class was over to show the class (win some lose some, I def lost that.)

11. the Degenerates Art Show

12. Late Bloomers

I'm going to ignore 13, like one of those old hotels

14. Unity

14. 5 Years Later

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Don't watch me, watch TV

Concert Photography

2014-

Graduate Portraits

Portrait Photography

2015, 2016, 2017, 2018

I did not do this with the idea of making money on graduate photos. There are enough people out in the world for that. I did, however, feel sick to my stomach every spring when I hopped on Instagram to see the same damn poses, backgrounds, ideas, concepts etc for every graduate photoshoot as if all of these people were exactly the same. This project was a chance to use my friendship with the subjects to develop concepts for graduation photoshoots that actually represented the person in the photo and not some lame, corny, cut, and paste idea that everyone uses. I WISH A WOMEN WOULD HAVE LET ME DO THIS, I digress. Regardless, everyone deserves their own concepts, and that's exactly what I gave the friends that allowed me.

The Degenerates

Logos - Art Direction - Promotion - Project Managment - Event Planning - Curation

April 3rd, 2015

Page 1

I had a dream I ran LA

I'd bring back cruising down Crenshaw

100.3 the beat was 92.3 the beat again

And I spoke at Low End Theory on Wednesdays

Everyone wore Kobe shirts at Clipper games

We'd drive down Whittier BLVD

I'd reopen world on wheels and bring back access

I'd move the Lakers back to the forum

I'd make Dre release Detox

and I'd kick all the yuppies out of Highland Park

I'd bring back Johnnies Pastramis on Adams

I'd take off the curfew at the grove

I'd make all the light skinned girls at UCLA answer text messages

I'd fire all the LAPD

I'd make System of a Down and Rage get back together

Everyone would have August 15th off

I'd have my work hung in LACMA

And I'd I have my own art show

I think the most important thing I can teach has nothing to do with being a great artist or being good at sports or some other arbitrary something. To me, the biggest lesson is friendship and being a good friend.

To be able to say: "I love you, bro" and mean it.

There's something great about finding people that will do anything for you, and you'll do the same because why?

Because fuck it, that's why.

It takes an effort to be there for someone, but in reality, it's effortless.

No part of me would say, hey this is like the best time of my life, but this is a dope ass time of my life.

We catch ourselves thinking, why are our friends so close and have been for so long.

It's been us, and we've added, but no one really ever gets booted or falls off, once you're in the circle you're in.

We just seem to attract the right type of people.

That's real like I think it even goes with the women we bring around too. None of us are winning a beauty pageant. We don't fight off the women, but like when it comes down to it, we're all young, we're all are hard-working, we want the all-mighty gusto. I think people take notice of that, even it's subconsciously, they see it..

How else would you explain how so many of us all chill tough, have fun and stay close for so long.

From afar, you can see us partying, drinking, being loud, and making fools out of ourselves, but what else are we supposed to do? Do you want boring? We don't do boring.

We fight amongst ourselves, but it's nothing hot wings and a beer won't solve. Because we couldn't be around people that want to hold grudges over who ate whose cereal, fuck outta here with that. If I were to describe any of us anytime, it would be easy, young, broke, hustling to get paid, drunk or looking to get drunk, chilling, and trying to find a girl who is willing to put with us. There's never a dull moment when you can find someone you can split a pitcher with..

With that being said, I've spent summer 2011 until Spring 2015 in college living, doing all sorts of things that I couldn't even imagine. I can look back and say there are a few, "damn what could have been," but fuck that because I'm happy with everything I've done, so why would I look back?

- January 30th, 2015

If you or if you did read that long sprawl, this is entirely different.

the Degenerates Art Show was my first attempt at entertaining an audience. I did by collected photos of my friends and me for 4 years. Everything we did, I had my camera ready to snap. At the time, I was not a good technical photographer, and most of the photos were taken on auto. I remember being somewhere needing to get a quick snap, and everything was blurry. I got so frustrated. I yelled, "WHY WOULD A CAMERA ALLOW SHIT TO BE BLURRY!" In the end, the show was a fucking insane night, a night I will never forget. We sold tacos, we painted the floor, we drank alcohol, we had a concert, etc.

Anyways, the show was compiled of somethousand photos pasted around gallery walls in a timeline of events starting right before 2011 and ending in Spring 2015.

I had a friend perform his music, his first performance. I created a stage with lighting, blacking out the rest of the room except where he was standing. There's one thing here not to forget in Spring 2015, there was a way to get a Geo-filter on Snapchat, but it wasn't monetized, nor was it even advertised. At the time, the only filters were locations, and even those were for big cities. I got a filter on Snapchat for midnight Thursday before the show before anyone had ever seen that before. It was the first time anyone on the campus had ever seen that. I calculated how much it would have cost a couple years later $12700 lol

No More Opt-Outs

Concept - Ideation

2015-2016

Incomplete Graduate Thesis

Bay Area Maker Faire 2016

2016 Cal State University Multimeda Gradaute Showcase

Late Bloomers

Logos - Art Direction - Promotion - Project Managment - Event Planning - Curation

April 7th, 2017

I'll be honest, Late Bloomers was the WORST show of the three. Anything that could go wrong went absolutely wrong. The art in the show was a display of photos(some not mine) and graphics(all mine) that asked the viewer the question, "What controls you?" I used real-life things like the Clintons with Trump and the Westbrook Durant relationship. The graphics here are a Jell-O branded quaalude, the tweet Kid Cudi sent out in Kanye's Saint Pablo typeface and the NFL seal with confederate iconography. DAMN SHAME NOBODY WAS ABLE TO SEE BECAUSE THE VENUE OWNER DECIDED TO PUT BENCHES IN FRONT OF THE VIEWING AREA. I lost money, the sound was terrible, wasted tacos, it rained, and this was around the tragic Oakland warehouse fire. Hence, the police shut us down before we really got started. I don't even have cool marketing tactics to show off, it is what it is.. The middle child is always the strangest.

Unity

Logos - Art Direction - Promotion - Project Managment - Event Planning - Curation

April 6th, 2018

In contrast to Late Bloomers, Unity was very next level. It did rain again. There's a video of me on stage complaining about it somewhere. This show I did with three other people, bought my own sound system, convince one of the other artists to have the show at his house. We threw the art show house party. Leading up to the show, we had good weather all they up to the Monday before. Then is decided to rain the entire day, did not matter much it was a great night. This ended up being the last show of the series. I do not have a name for the series; the Jiveass series? the College years? the Bay Area years? I'm not sure, but it was the end of me doing art + music in Hayward. The artwork I displayed was the first in a current series of pieces that used the context of pop culture icons and line art.

House 4'x 6' printed on white canvas(SOLD!)

2020 18"x 16" printed on white canvas(SOLD!)

2023 24"x 36" digital art print(SOLD!)

Education

California State University East Bay

Single Subject Teaching Credential Program

Persuing a single subject art teaching credential.

June 2020 - May 2021

California State University East Bay

Master of Arts Multimedia

Ideon — Graduate Thesis

Smart Office — Graduate Project

CSUEB British Documentary Experience Summer Abroad

Guerrilla Documentary

CSUEB British Documentary Experience Summer Abroad Advertisement - Take More Photos

September 2014 - June 2016

California State University East Bay

Bachelor of Arts Graphic Design

Delta Sigma Pi

Delta Sigma Phi

The Zeta Omega Fraternity(founder)

Computer Science club

LGBTQ Alley

CSUEB Greek Council

ASI contributor

PioneerTV contributor

BSU

June 2011 - June 2013

El Camino College

Associate of Arts

Intercollegiate football

September 2006 - June 2010

Teaching Experience

Palisades Charter High School

Substitute Teacher

Perform instructional and classroom management processes for teachers who are absent for a day or longer periods of time. Their duties include taking attendance, explaining homework, and maintaining classroom cleanliness. I was a permanent Sub for the school, only substituting on that campus during time of employment.

2017 - Present

Teachers on Reserve

Substitute Teacher

Perform the instructional and classroom management processes for teachers who are absent for a day or longer periods of time. Their duties include taking attendance, explaining homework, and maintaining classroom cleanliness. I work for this company in the bay area and greater Los Angeles area and was sourced in every grade and every subject and in a wide range of situations from alternative, public charter, and private schools.

Oakland Charter Academy

After School Enrichment

I was the primary teacher for two classes. Firstly a yearbook class in which me and a group of students put together a middle school yearbook for a small student body. We approached the project like a business starting with cover, colors, awards etc. Secondly I was a study hall tutor for 6th grade assisting students with all subjects when needed.

Design Experience

Freelance

I have been working as a freelance designer since 2008 and have taken on dozens clients for design work, logos, websites, branding, etc and in different sectors; corporate branding, medical marijuana, sports, small business.

2008 - Present

IT Experience

Cal State University East Bay

Classroom support

Reprographics assistant

CSUEB TV student assistant

2012 - 2016

Statement as an Artist

“An identity would seem to be arrived at by the way in which the person faces and uses his experience.” James Baldwin. This is a quote that sits with me deeply as I move forward in the collection moments in people's lives with art, whether it be with a single organized, prepared project, or a collection of several hundred photos that span a period of a subject’s life.

My life as an artist encapsulated with the idea that there are stories that I need to tell, and my passion is to seek out the profound and thought-provoking and add a level of empathy and emotion. My subject for my first exhibition, the Degenerates, was a group of people. Once I took you into their world, they became individuals that were fighting battles with depression, sexual confusion, anxiety, family issues, death, drugs, and alcohol. Moreover, I created empathy not only from the outside looking in but amongst themselves. Primarily they were some people that were randomly put together in a dorm room, some black, some white, some Latino, some Jewish, some Catholic, some straight, some gay and because of this project they see each other as family. I told their story through photos taken over four years and put their life on walls for anyone to embrace.

At the heart of it, that project was the who I am as an artist. Exploring the humanity of a people with whom I am unfamiliar, curating the show, designing the promotional materials as well as promoting the show. Taking on the entire load for the show and subsequent shows molded me into the artist that I have become.

I cannot predict where my artistry will go whilst I navigate the world. I do predict that I will gain an unparalleled appreciation for the history and practice of graphic design, photography, and videography that will go far beyond the understanding that I have now. I know that the storytelling through photography and design will become refined and based in groundwork set by my predecessors. I want to be able to move the cultural melting pot of Los Angeles’s underground music scene which I have been following for the last year forward. I want to add deep historical context to the work I produce. Furthermore, I want to take my work and place it in front of the eyes of people that are not familiar with the subjects with whom I choose to work. Lastly, I want to expand my storytelling to other mediums taking the design foundation I possess and storytelling photography and combining them to make film and video and do impactful installations as I did with the Degenerates show.

I am incredibly proud of the artist I have become, and I think that my design foundation has paved the way into many other mediums. It is my position that design fundamentals such as space, shape, layout, typography, and most importantly that everything that you show even down to the smallest detail must have a reason and meaning to be there are indispensable to be a true artist of any medium.

I AM AN ARTIST.

Teaching Philosophy

As an art teacher, I firmly believe in encouraging students to push the boundaries in their artwork. To gain and apply critical thinking to design solutions. I firmly believe in a constructivist approach to learning and showing works of art from artists as examples that match a class's demographic.

Continually questioning students decsions to unlock real-life critical thought and separating meaningless aesthetic critiques and replacing them with well throughout and concrete criticism. I believe that artists develop by gaining imagination and deep and focused thought through engaging project-based learning. I believe in making works of art real through field trips, hands-on activities, and other interactive learning tools. Although I am committed to teaching visual art and media art standards, I am focused on making groups of students know the difference between critical art thoughts and aesthetic opinions.

I see my role as an art teacher as someone who must have a safe and welcoming classroom, so students come in and immediately can express themselves. To achieve this, we must, as a class, acquire a level of empathy. As a teacher, I will usher in an atmosphere of learning, reacting, and doing that will lead to students understanding each others perspectives.

“Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.”

-Albert Einstein

Contact

As I get older, I would like to attempt to be more serious about organizing my life. If you'd like to hire me as a teacher, click here. Suppose you'd like me to take a photo or design a logo, click here.

I appreciate you being here, the only thing we all have is time, and it's finite. You have a good day..

Best,