The number one thing anyone could call Ira is passionate. He's stubborn, driven, and always bent to follow the flights of his own eccentric ideas. He tends to appear stoic, guarded, and wary; some would call him moody, but he's not someone who's ever worried what other people think of him.

He lives for his art, and he wholly transforms when he gets to perform and put on a public persona, becoming tireless, boundless, ecstatic. He loves pushing people with his art and provoking reactions-- which he sees as his work's real aim, not the works themselves. He has a thick wicked streak and he's eager to toy with people's expectations and ideas: of art, of himself, of how they see the world.

Ira's had bipolar since he was a teenager, and he has a complicated relationship with the disease. They may be the demons he's bound to, but they're also the demons he can harness, and regardless, they're the demons who make him who he is. Theo has known him the whole time, knows him better than anyone else does, probably even his sister, and he'll always be there to support Ira on his bad days. There's a deep understanding in that friendship, and Ira returns the favor, lighthearted about Theo's worries, but always sturdily and staunchly behind him.

Ira's wary of kindness he doesn't think he deserves, even when it comes from Theo, and his sense of self-worth varies wildly based what he's created lately. He's never easy on himself, and even when he seems carefree and silly, there's always a sober darkness needling at him from deep within.

Ira and Theo are the same height, but Ira is large and solid while Theo is wiry and slim. In his everyday life, Ira wears something comfortable, plain and practical while working, though he works barefoot in the studio. He has deeply red curly hair, and he wears glasses.

When they run tunnels, he usually wears a muumuu (with shorts underneath), a hoodie with the sleeves cut off, boots, gloves, and kneepads.

If asked, he says the dresses are a performance art thing, but he just likes wearing them, and he enjoys the freedom of his alter ego being able to wear whatever he wants.

It's not visible in his refs, but he wears a kippah/yarmulke.

His weight fluctuates: he tends to gain weight when he's depressed or medicated, and he loses weight when he's in a manic episode and not eating.

Ira drinks way too much coffee and rarely seems to sleep, but when he does, he sleeps like the dead.

His interests include caterwauling his plans to the tune of Guided By Voices songs and marathoning old Bob Vila episodes of This Old House at high volume while working in the studio late at night. It's unsurprising to find any manner of strange radio or TV broadcasts blasting from his partition, but his musical taste is easy to predict: he has a thick stack of '90s lo-fi albums always in heavy rotation on his CD boom box, and his music is very important to him.

Ira struggles to keep any of them alive, but he has a few sad plants in his studio that he's been trying his best with.

Ira's oeuvre is weird sculpture made from collections and found objects, performance art that provokes reactions, and subversive, irreverent paintings. He works out of a huge, dilapidated ex-warehouse-turned-studio in Long Island City, Queens called the Paper Street Studios, along with Theo and their other artist friends.

By night, Ira and Theo are anonymously infamous under their graffiti tags and are collectively known as SAINT/ESCAPE or St./ESC. For street art, Ira's signature style-- and befitting his tag, SAINT-- is religious icon-style throw-ups under subway tunnel emergency lights. He likes the dark irony of being a SAINT with demons, and it's a theme he periodically visits in his work.

His art influences range from street art to religious art to modern/contemporary and performance art: some idols are Keith Haring, Jeff Koons, and Gilbert & George.

Ira's less worried than Theo is about how his art sells and about fitting into marketable aesthetics, but his work is sharp and clever and so is he, when he's trying to bullshit deep meanings to get people to buy it-- an art he's mastered as much as the rest of his skills.

His art does mean a lot to him, though-- and often too much. He's passionate and driven and it's easy for him to lose himself in his projects, neglecting himself for the "higher purpose" of focusing on his creation. He loves feeling powerfully, ingeniously creative: that's when he's in the studio for days, working, unsleeping and wild, until Theo eventually drags him away.