From Kent State University to the streets of New York, from fashion and photography to art education, GS3 built a career on one radical idea: creativity should have no borders.
There is a particular kind of artist who does not simply enter a discipline but challenges the walls separating disciplines from one another.
Georgio Sabino III—GS3—is that kind of artist.
His story is not simply about becoming a painter, photographer, fashion designer, educator, or mixed-media artist. It is about refusing to accept that these identities have to exist separately.
For Sabino, art was never supposed to fit neatly inside a department, a curriculum, a gallery, or a predetermined definition of what an artist is allowed to be.
That conviction began long before college.
As the second-youngest of ten children, Sabino had already made an important decision by the seventh grade: he wanted to be an artist, and he wanted to pursue art as his life’s work.
What followed at Kent State University, Case Western Reserve University, and the Cleveland Institute of Art would not change that decision.
It would make the vision bigger.
Kent State: Learning the Language of Art—and Challenging Its Boundaries
At Kent State University, where Sabino pursued his bachelor’s degree, he began deliberately defining his artistic identity.
He created his GS3 logo with help from Aaron local artist, an early act of branding himself and his creative practice. But the logo was only the beginning. He immersed himself in classes because he wanted to understand not merely how to make art, but how the systems of art, fashion, design, and process worked.
At the time, Sabino remembers the relationship between the university’s Fine Art and Fashion programs as highly divided—almost adversarial.
Art was art. Fashion was fashion.
The departments had their own cultures, languages, expectations, and boundaries.
Sabino didn’t see the point. His fundamental idea was much simpler:
Art is everything.
Why should a painting be separated from a garment?
Why couldn’t a fabric be a canvas?
Why couldn’t fashion become sculpture?
Why couldn’t a photograph become part of a fashion design?
Why couldn’t jewelry become an extension of a painting?
Why couldn’t a runway become a gallery?
Those questions became central to his college experience.
Sabino was not simply trying to become good at art. He learned college was an exercise.
He was trying to convince the institution that his way of thinking was legitimate.
Thursday Nights: Kent State to Cleveland
One of the rituals of Sabino’s college years reveals the intensity of his ambition.
After art history class on Thursdays, he would drive from Kent to Cleveland.
At that time, Tower City Center was booming, and Cleveland’s downtown retail landscape offered a glimpse into the fashion world Sabino was studying and imagining himself entering.
Names such as Gucci, Fendi, Barneys New York, and Brooks Brothers represented a world of fashion, luxury, design, branding, and visual identity. I enjoyed walking into the store touching the fabrics and looking at the new designs.
Sabino wasn’t simply looking at clothes.
He was studying the ecosystem.
He was watching how fashion communicated.
He was absorbing how design could create an identity before a person ever spoke.
And then he would take those observations back into his own work.
Painting Silk Before It Became Fashion
In Fine Art, Sabino began hand-painting silk.
That decision was significant.
Silk was not simply a material to him. It was a surface with movement, texture, light, and physical presence.
He was beginning to understand that a painting didn’t necessarily have to remain flat against a wall.
It could move.
It could wrap around the body.
It could become a garment.
It could enter fashion.
In fashion illustration, meanwhile, he experimented with mixed media, bringing materials and approaches together instead of treating illustration as a single-medium exercise.
The divisions between art and fashion continued to appear in his hands.
When Fashion Became Sculpture
Sabino’s imagination went even further in sculpture.
Instead of treating sculpture as an isolated three-dimensional object, he brought his love of fashion into the discipline.
He created a fashion runway and catwalk, along with a metal fashion model wearing a scarf bearing the name “Sabino.”
The work was simultaneously sculpture, fashion, branding, and performance.
It was an early manifestation of something that would become a recurring theme throughout his career:
Sabino did not want to make art that merely existed. He wanted to make art that occupied space, moved through space, and interacted with people.
The Print Was Only the Beginning
Printmaking offered another opportunity to experiment. Sabino would create the print, but he didn’t stop when the print was finished. He added sticks and other materials, experimenting with natural elements and using berries to color portions of the image.
Again, the question was not:
“What does the assignment require?” He read the syllabus but include his style.
It was:
“What happens if I do something else?”
That willingness to move beyond the expected became one of his defining creative characteristics.
His imagination produced unusual and sometimes extraordinary views because he wasn’t trying to reproduce what everyone else was already doing.
He was attempting to see what could happen from his perspective.
New York: The Dream Moves to the Runway
While attending senior year at Kent State, Sabino began taking his work outside Ohio.
He traveled to New York City and New Jersey, where he showcased his designs through Blassingame Magazine’s showcases for emerging fashion designers.
This was not theoretical anymore. The clothing was leaving the classroom. It was entering the world.
Sabino and Richard Johnson Jr. brought models from Kent State University to participate in the fashion shows. For a young designer, seeing your own work on a runway is a powerful moment.
The idea you had in your head becomes fabric.
Fabric becomes clothing.
Clothing goes onto a body.
The body moves. And suddenly, the thing that existed only in your imagination has an audience.
The dream had become physical.
The Puck Building: History in the Room
Sabino also showed work at New York’s historic Puck Building, a place associated with generations of creative production and cultural history such as Jean Mitchel Basquait.
For an emerging artist, the significance was not lost on him.
He was putting his designs into environments where the history of New York’s art, fashion, media, and creative culture was already embedded in the walls.
Sabino’s path was no longer only about learning from institutions.
He was beginning to place himself inside the cultural conversation.
Soul Fire: A Young Designer Gets a New York Showcase
An investor named Charles and Lisa Woodward sponsored Sabino to have his fashions highlighted at Soul Fire, a store on Orchid Street in New York City, in the area between Delancey and Bloom.
For Sabino, the experience represented another important transition.
He was learning that an artist’s career requires more than creativity.
It requires people willing to believe in the work.
It requires relationships.
It requires presentation.
It requires opportunity.
And it requires the courage to put the work in front of people who may not know you yet.
Returning to Cleveland—and Discovering Photography
When Sabino returned to Cleveland, another major chapter began.
He decided to teach himself photography.
There was no need for someone to hand him a new identity.
He simply picked up another tool.
The camera became an extension of the same curiosity that had driven his painting, sculpture, fashion, printmaking, and textile experimentation. He understood composition! That was natural to him.
Photography gave him another way to see.
And soon, other people began seeing what he could do with the camera.
Tower Press Lofts: Art as a Way of Living
During the administration of Cleveland Mayor Michael R. White, Sabino was juried into Tower Press Lofts, a live/work arts development created with a major public investment of two million.
He became part of a community of approximately 20 artists who were selected to live and work in the building for a period of years.
The significance went beyond having a studio.
The concept of live/work housing recognizes something important about artists:
Art isn’t simply something you do between 9 and 5.
It can be a way of life.
The studio, home, community, and professional practice begin to overlap.
For Sabino, it was another step toward the interdisciplinary life he had been building since his Kent State years.
The Camera Takes Him Around the World
Photography soon opened doors that the young designer could not have predicted.
Sabino was hired to photograph major artists and cultural events, including work associated with Grammy-winning artist Jill Scott.
During the Sugar Water Tour, featuring Jill Scott, Erykah Badu, and Queen Latifah, Sabino photographed from rooftops in New York City near Radio City Music Hall to smaller venues around the country. He also produced a tour book for Jill Scott’s team.
This was a remarkable transformation.
The young man who had once been hand-painting silk at Kent State was now documenting major music artists from behind a professional camera.
And yet, the underlying principle was unchanged:
See something. Experiment. Learn the system. Find your place inside it. Then push it further.
Silver B: “In the Mix, Mix, Mix, Mix”
Cleveland introduced Sabino to another influential figure: Silver B, a local legend whose radio career and cultural influence made him an important figure in the city’s music scene.
Silver B became a friend and mentor. One of his memorable phrases was:
“In the mix, mix, mix, mix.”
For Sabino, the phrase could almost serve as a description of his entire artistic philosophy.
Stay in the mix. Be around people. Be around music. Be around art. Be around fashion. Be around business. Be around culture. Be around opportunity.
Don’t isolate the disciplines.
Mix them.
Silver B also brought Sabino into the world of Hip Hop music awards, expanding his network and exposing him to another dimension of cultural production.
The artist was becoming a documentarian of culture while simultaneously participating in it.
Tim Shuckerow: The Conversation That Changed Everything
Another crucial relationship emerged through the Sankofa Fine Art Plus board.
Sabino met Tim Shuckerow.
But Shuckerow would become more than a professional acquaintance.
He became a friend, mentor, and an important figure in Sabino’s educational development.
At one point, Tim asked Sabino a simple but life-changing question:
“Would you like to get your master’s degree?”
Sabino’s answer was immediate:
Yes.
And, as Sabino tells it, the rest is history.
That conversation opened the door to the next major stage of his education at Case Western Reserve University and the Cleveland Institute of Art, where his work in art education and studio practice expanded considerably.
Case Western Reserve University and the Cleveland Institute of Art
Graduate school did not cause Sabino to abandon the interdisciplinary philosophy he had developed at Kent State.
It gave him more tools with which to pursue it.
His graduate education included the Cleveland Institute of Art, where Tim Shuckerow was an important mentor and friend in his art education journey.
Sabino ultimately completed a double master’s degree experience involving Case Western Reserve University and the Cleveland Institute of Art, deepening both his studio practice and his understanding of education.
And once again, he did not approach education passively.
He experimented.
The Farm, Fire, Clay, and Raku
One of the memorable experiences of Sabino’s graduate years involved going to the Case Western Reserve University farm to work with ceramics and Raku firing.
He created several masks. Raku is inherently unpredictable. Fire becomes part of the process. Heat transforms the material. The artist cannot control every variable. For someone whose creative philosophy was built around experimentation, this was an ideal medium. The lesson was familiar: Make it. Fire it. See what happens. Learn from what happens.
New York Becomes a Classroom
For his field study, Sabino returned to New York City—not simply as a fashion designer this time, but as an artist and educator-researcher.
He studied educational and cultural institutions including: (YouTube videos)
- The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
- Private schools in Manhattan, including the Broadway/59th Street area
- East school in Harlem
- The Studio Museum in Harlem
- Cleveland School of the Arts with Danny W. Carver
He interviewed people and studied how different environments approached art education.
He wasn’t looking for one answer.
He was trying to understand the ecosystem.
What happens when art is taught in a museum?
What happens in a private school?
What happens in Harlem?
What role does culture play?
How does the environment shape the student?
How can an educator help a child see themselves as creative?
These questions would become crucial to the teacher he would eventually become.
The Artist as Entrepreneur
During college and graduate school, Sabino was not simply a student. He was also operating an art business, selling paintings and providing photography services. That distinction matters. He was learning the business of art while learning the making of art. He was discovering that artists need to understand:
creation + presentation + marketing + relationships + business + community.
That entrepreneurial experience would later inform his approach to photography, education, exhibitions, fashion, and creative technology.
The Presidential Photographer’s View
Photography eventually brought Sabino into spaces few artists ever experience.
He covered Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, including events connected to Obama’s successful presidential campaigns and both inaugurations.
Sabino was also invited to photograph at a ball associated with the inauguration.
He covered major political and cultural events and photographed numerous prominent figures.
The camera had taken him from the runway to the concert stage, from rooftops to political history.
The photographer was no longer merely observing history.
He was documenting it. While in the Whitehouse President Obama signed GS3 work of himself.
When Major Artists Started Calling
Sabino’s photography career continued to expand.
Major artists hired him to travel to New York City and other locations to photograph them and their events.
His photographs and event coverage appeared in publications including Essence and Jet, among other magazines, as he documented major networking and cultural events connected with figures such as Dr. George Fraser and the FraserNet community like Les Brown.
His portfolio continued to grow through weddings, concerts, political events, cultural gatherings, fashion, and major celebrations.
He would eventually photograph more than 400 weddings, bringing another dimension of storytelling into his career from all ethnicities.
Obama, Ohio State, and the Cavaliers
Sabino’s camera also placed him near some of the defining sports and cultural moments of his era.
He covered The Ohio State Buckeyes’ National Playoff Championship, an achievement that became part of the broader national celebration around the team and its players, including Ezekiel Elliott and Urban Meyer.
The following year, Sabino covered the Cleveland Cavaliers’ championship, including the historic era associated with LeBron James and Kyrie Irving.
He was also honored in connection with his coverage and cultural contributions, including moments connected to President Obama.
Again, his career crossed boundaries:
art → photography → sports → politics → music → fashion → education.
The Teacher Emerges
Eventually, the artist’s career came full circle.
Sabino entered education and has now spent approximately 16 years working in education, bringing his experience as a professional artist into the classroom.
But he did not become the kind of teacher who simply tells students what art is supposed to look like.
Instead, he brought the philosophy of the skateboarder, the fashion designer, the photographer, the sculptor, and the experimental artist into his classroom.
His students became part of his next experiment:
What happens when you tell young people they are allowed to create without fear?
“You Cannot Make a Mistake in This Classroom”
One of Sabino’s most powerful teaching principles is:
“You can never make a mistake in this classroom because mistakes are appreciated and accepted.”
For him, this isn’t simply a motivational statement.
It is an artistic philosophy.
He teaches students that when they make a mistake, they should tell themselves—or even tell their subconscious or their roommate:
“This mistake is worth money.”
Why?
Because the “mistake” might be the beginning of something original.
A mistake might reveal a new technique.
A mistake might produce an unexpected color.
A mistake might create a new shape.
A mistake might become the foundation of an entirely new artwork.
The objective is to teach students to stop immediately judging what they make.
First create. Then evaluate.
The Circle, Square, Triangle, and Rectangle
Sabino also teaches a deceptively simple lesson: If you learn to make a circle, square, triangle, and rectangle, you can begin to draw almost anything. But the technical lesson is only half of it.
The more important lesson is psychological: Do not judge the first thing you make.
Accept it.
Look at it.
Ask your peers what they see.
Listen to their reactions.
Listen to the compliments.
Listen to the awards and praise.
Build confidence.
Then make another one.
And another.
This is the same philosophy that the young skateboarder learned decades earlier.
Teaching Students to Create Outside Society’s Rules
Sabino encourages his students to create art the way they see it, rather than simply reproducing what society tells them art should look like.
He asks them to:
Mix.
Blend.
Try.
Experiment.
Do.
He wants students to discover that their perspective has value.
This is particularly powerful because Sabino himself had spent years learning how to defend his own perspective.
At Kent State, he was trying to make people understand why fashion and fine art could coexist. Now it does.
As a young artist, he was creating sculpture that looked like fashion.
As a designer, he was painting silk.
As a photographer, he was entering worlds of music, politics, sports, and culture.
As an educator, he now teaches students that they don’t have to stay inside one creative box.
As a college professor he taught his student at Cuyahoga Community College photography in the Encore program.
From Student Art to Galleries and Auctions
The results have been tangible.
During the last several years of his teaching career, Sabino’s K–8 students have had work enter art galleries, appear in YouTube videos, and receive broader public exposure.
Some students’ work even reached Christie’s auction house in New York for three consecutive years while Sabino was working with the Studio Institute, associated with the larger Studio in a School ecosystem founded by Agnes “Aggie” Gund.
Sabino was invited to New York for a 45th-anniversary celebration connected to Studio in a School/Studio Institute.
He also attended an event at 59th Street, where he viewed videos and highlights celebrating the organization’s work.
The scale of the event was significant: Sabino recalls tables costing approximately $17,000, with approximately $3 million raised for the nonprofit.
He found himself sitting beside Roy Lichtenstein’s wife and the president of the Studio Institute.
The symbolism was extraordinary.
The young artist who had once been learning to create in school was now sitting among people helping shape the future of art education.
And his own students’ work was entering the same broader cultural ecosystem.
The Circle Closes
There is a beautiful symmetry to Sabino’s story.
As a student, he wanted to be understood.
As an adult, he teaches children to understand themselves.
As a young artist, he fought against the separation of disciplines.
As a teacher, he encourages students to mix and blend.
As a skateboarder, he learned through repetition.
As a photographer, he learned through observation.
As a designer, he learned through construction.
As a painter, he learned through color.
As an educator, he teaches through encouragement.
The disciplines changed.
The philosophy remained.
GS3’s Real Medium May Be Imagination
It is tempting to describe Georgio Sabino III as a photographer.
Or a painter.
Or a fashion designer.
Or an art educator.
Or a sculptor.
Or a mixed-media artist.
Or an entrepreneur.
Or an innovator of GoVia: Highlight A Hero
But perhaps none of those words alone adequately describe him.
His true medium may be imagination.
Photography is one tool.
Fabric is another.
Clay is another.
Metal is another.
Fashion is another.
Technology is another.
The classroom is another.
Even the skateboard was another.
His work has always been about asking what happens when one thing is combined with another.
What happens when fashion enters sculpture?
What happens when photography enters fashion?
What happens when painting enters fabric?
What happens when technology enters art?
What happens when a child is told that a mistake isn’t a mistake?
What happens when a young person is told:
Your way of seeing the world matters.
The Artist as a Teacher, the Teacher as an Artist
Sabino’s greatest contribution may ultimately be found not in the number of photographs he has taken, exhibitions he has participated in, celebrities he has photographed, garments he has designed, or paintings he has created.
It may be found in the permission he gives others to imagine.
He understands something that many artists discover only after decades of practice:
Creativity grows when fear decreases.
That is why he tells students that mistakes are welcome.
That is why he asks them to listen to their classmates.
That is why he teaches basic shapes as a foundation for unlimited possibilities.
That is why he asks students to mix and blend.
That is why he points toward artists who have already broken the rules.
And that is why his own career refuses to fit comfortably into a single category.
From the Skateboard to the Studio
Look closely at the arc of Georgio Sabino III’s life and the pattern becomes unmistakable.
The young boy from a family of ten who decided in seventh grade that art would be his life.
The teenager experimenting with skateboarding in the 1980s.
The young man traveling to New York with his brother Marrico and performing tricks for strangers.
The Kent State student hand-painting silk.
The fashion student creating mixed-media illustrations with AR.
The sculptor constructing a runway and metal fashion figure.
The printmaker using sticks and berries.
The designer bringing Kent State models to New York and New Jersey.
The emerging designer showing work at the Puck Building.
The artist whose work was highlighted at Soul Fire.
The Cleveland photographer teaching himself the camera.
The Tower Press artist living and working among other creatives like Robert Banks Film maker and Dexter Davis the artist.
The photographer documenting Jill Scott, Erykah Badu, Queen Latifah and countless other cultural figures.
The mentee who heard Tim Shuckerow ask, “Would you like to get your master’s degree?”
The graduate student studying ceramics and Raku.
The researcher visiting the Guggenheim, Harlem schools, Broadway-area schools and the Studio Museum of Harlem.
The photographer documenting presidential history.
The artist whose work entered national magazines.
The photographer who documented more than 400 weddings.
The artist who covered Ohio State Buckeyes and the Cleveland Cavaliers.
The educator whose students reached galleries and Christie’s Auction House in NYC from Cleveland Ohio.
The teacher telling children:
You cannot make a mistake here.
All of these people are the same person.
The GS3 Philosophy
If one had to reduce Sabino’s creative philosophy to a few principles, perhaps it would look something like this:
Don’t choose one discipline when you can learn many.
Don’t fear mistakes—study them.
Don’t imitate society’s rules when your imagination has another answer.
Don’t ask whether art belongs in one category. Ask what the art needs.
Don’t stop at the first solution. Experiment.
Don’t keep creativity locked inside yourself. Share it.
And when you discover something new, teach someone else how to imagine it too.
That philosophy explains why the artist who once experimented with skateboard tricks would eventually experiment with silk, fashion, photography, painting, sculpture, ceramics, jewelry, education, and technology.
The skateboard was never simply a skateboard.
It was the first laboratory.
Kent State was the first major arena where Sabino had to defend the idea that art could be everything.
New York was the proving ground.
Cleveland became the community.
Graduate school became the laboratory for education and deeper artistic research.
And the classroom became the place where the experiment continues.
The Future Is Still Being Invented
Georgio Sabino III’s career is best understood not as a completed biography but as an ongoing experiment.
The young skateboarder who repeatedly attempted a trick until his body understood what his imagination had already envisioned was practicing the same discipline the artist would later use in the studio.
Imagine.
Attempt.
Fail.
Learn.
Modify.
Try again.
Create.
That is the rhythm of GS3.
And perhaps that is why his work continues to move across photography, fashion, painting, textiles, education, technology, and contemporary culture.
He never learned to see the borders between them.
Or perhaps more accurately:
He saw the borders—and decided they were meant to be crossed.
The artist’s life, in this telling, becomes one long question:
What can I create if I refuse to limit my imagination?
For Georgio Sabino III, the answer is still being made.
One experiment. One image. One garment. One student. One idea—and one impossible-looking trick—at a time.
