amberhouse sticker shop
amberhouse is a custom bike sticker shop, inspired and driven by youth in Baltimore city. This project helps teens realize their own personal power through bikes, art, and self-expression.
In 2020, during the early pandemic, I started riding my bike around Baltimore city. Shortly after, I met the “wheelie boys”, the youth of Baltimore bikelife.
Bikelife is a rich culture that includes dirtbikes and pedal bike rideouts in many cities around the world. The riders perform stunts like wheelies and complex tricks that involve jumping to different parts of the bike, all while traveling at a high rate of speed. Through filming video clips of the youth-led rides, I became closer with these kids.
In the summer of 2022, I created custom stickers for one of the kids’ bikes. We posted the finished, customized bike on Instagram, and before I knew it, there were youth at my house almost every day making stickers. They’d call one another on the phone:
“Where you at?”
“We at Amber house.”
Amber house, that’s exactly how they say it. They said it enough times and the name stuck.
Soon after, “amberhouse” was born as a youth-driven sticker shop and apparel project, and since then I have made reflective stickers and customized over 100 bikes, dirt bikes, motorcycles, and vehicles from all over the US.
I also created original shirts, stickers, and posters featuring the youth of Baltimore bikelife with custom art drawn from my photographs and videos.
It makes my heart swell to see the confidence and swagger that these kids show when their new, custom bike reflects their unique personality and talents. When I’m working 1:1 with each kid to customize his bike, I tell him that the day you get a new sticker kit is the best time to land that trick you’ve been working on but can’t quite get. It’s happened so many times at this point that it’s become a little Baltimore legend among this crowd.
