My name is Adriano Rodrigues. I am a Neon UV visual artist and am part of this year’s Top Talent, born in Brazil and raised in Albany, NY. I began my career as an illustrator, using Copic markers to create dark, surrealistic, images. In January 2015, I enrolled at Hudson Valley Community College to earn my degree in Digital Media.

One of my projects that I had created earlier in the semester featured a lava lamp which is one of the trickier things to photograph because of the hues and vibrant colors. I worked with the image in Adobe Lightroom and I learned that with some tweaking, the vibrancy of the image spoke to me. I didn’t realize it at the time, but that lava lamp was the start of the next phase of my career.