From Pain to Power: iBOMS on Grief, God, and Black Magic

By Avery Anderson

iBOMS isn’t making art for clout. He’s making it because he has to.

As a kid growing up in St. Pete, he discovered that when the world got too loud, art could speak. His earliest drawings weren’t for fun—they were for survival.

“I would go to school and make these pictures of God’s hand coming down from heaven,” he said. “Overseeing our household, keeping us safe, letting [my mom] know that the lady who passed was still safe.”

He’s talking about the suicide of his mother’s girlfriend—an event that unfolded inside their home, in front of his mom, and cast a long shadow over their lives. He was too young to process it, but old enough to want to ease her pain.

That instinct—to translate emotion into image, to turn chaos into connection—never left him. Now in his 20s, iBOMS’ work still reaches for something bigger. But it’s evolved: from grief drawings to murals, from spiritual sketches to stitched streetwear.

And it’s louder now.

His newest project is a series of custom jackets embroidered with phrases like HOODOO We Think We R? The phrase isn’t just a provocation. It’s a reference to Hoodoo, a cultural and spiritual practice shaped by the African diaspora, southern Black Christianity, and resistance.

“Hoodoo is a tradition or religion in the Black community that’s a fusion between Abrahamic religions and African indigenous spirituality,” he explained. “There’s an undeniable source of magic or power within my people.”

And yet, he says, that spiritual identity has always been complicated by colonization, white supremacy, and forced assimilation. “We also have a different set of beliefs because of where we’ve been displaced—and who has control over the country at the moment.”

His jackets carry that weight—and flip it. They’re wearable reclamation. A theology stitched in thread.

Art As Resistance, Not Just Aesthetic

Long before the fashion, iBOMS was finding his way into the city’s art scene. After high school, commissions started coming in: portraits, sneakers, murals. “I wasn’t that good at murals though,” he said, laughing. “I didn’t know how to work the spray can.”

But the point wasn’t perfection. It was momentum.

Instagram showed him what was possible—artists doing shows, traveling with their work, building careers. “That’s really when I started to see it as a professional endeavor,” he said.

Still, turning that dream into a reality meant contending with something bigger than algorithms: people’s assumptions.

“I would say something people don't always understand about being a young Black artist in this world is that you're very underestimated in a lot of spaces,” he said. “They don't believe that you have the talent or the know-how to do the things that you know how to do.”

His response isn’t about fighting to prove people wrong. It’s about refusing to let them define him.

“You have to almost continuously be on the grind,” he said. “And it's not so much proving to them, but proving to yourself that you are unstoppable, no matter what they try to put in your way.”

A City That Raised Him

If his inner fire kept him moving, it was St. Pete that gave him the room to grow.

“It’s like the entire city was my canvas,” he said. “Each of the artists were all mentors in some way.”

The collaborative, tight-knit nature of the arts scene in St. Pete helped shape his work—and his worldview. “There’s a certain level of community in St. Petersburg, Florida that I haven’t seen anywhere else,” he said.

Now based in the Seattle-Tacoma area, the contrast is stark.

“It’s very free-for-all kind of energy,” he said. “But back home, everyone wanted to see you succeed—or at least see what kind of ability you had, because most of us had pretty insane abilities or techniques.”

That sense of mutual creative investment—what he describes as an “energy source”—is what made St. Pete feel like more than a city. It was an incubator.

And in many ways, it still is. He may have left, but the current still runs through him.

What’s Next

This August, iBOMS will be featured in two major events: Black Magic, a group art exhibition on August 14, and Legendary As Fuck, a fashion show on August 17.

Both titles are declarations. But they’re also containers—spaces to showcase work that doesn’t fit neatly into boxes.

Because iBOMS isn’t just painting walls or sewing jackets. He’s building a visual language to hold grief, faith, power, and resistance all at once. And if his work makes people uncomfortable? Good.

It’s not about easy answers. It’s about asking the kind of questions that reclaim space.

Questions like: Who do we think we are?

And the answer, if iBOMS has anything to do with it, is louder every day.