In our Staff Spotlight series, we’re pulling back the curtain on the talented artists, artisans, and craftspeople who make up our crew. Our team is a gumbo pot of creativity: painters, sculptors, woodworkers, fiber artists, costume designers, metalsmiths, actors, musicians, writers, jewelry designers, and the list goes on. If you can dream it up, chances are we’re already doing it in our free time, too. That’s what makes us so good at our day jobs as custom experiential fabricators.

Each month, we’ll shine a light on one of our team members—their inspirations, their after-hours projects, and the creative spark they bring to both their life and our shop floor. Because behind every masterpiece is a person with a story worth sharing.

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This month, we’re spotlighting Luke Holloran, who is not only a fantastic Installation Tech and Driver, but was also named DFW's Employee of the Month last month!

Luke Holloran grew up in Harrisonburg, Virginia, where music found him early. He sang in the church choir as a child, wrote his first poem in middle school, and soon began learning piano, drums, and guitar. The drums especially drew him in, and before long, he found himself being invited to rap and play drums in church.

Today, he makes music under the name Grayling Skyy, a name with a story behind it. Grayling was the middle name of Dan Fogelberg, his mom’s favorite musician, and it became an inside joke between them when he was young. The second “y” in Skyy is a quiet reminder to ask why and to look up.

One of Luke’s first memories of writing’s impact came from a middle school assignment. His class was asked to write about who they would choose to have lunch with, living or dead, and explain why. Luke considered the obvious choices—Jesus, Santa Claus, Michael Jordan, Allen Iverson—but none felt quite right.

Then he thought about what it would mean to have lunch with his birth mother. “It was the first time I ever wrote something where my hand was working faster than my brain,” Luke says. When his teacher asked him to read the piece to the class, he was overcome with emotion and cried as he read.

He expected his classmates to laugh or tease him, but instead, everyone listened. When he returned to his seat, the girl in front of him turned around and gently touched his hand in support. That moment showed him that when you write what you feel and love what you write, someone else may recognize themselves in it, too.

As it turns out, his essays weren’t the only thing evoking emotion. Luke laughs as he recounts how in high school, his younger brother found a collection of his poems on their shared computer hard drive, then repackaged them under his own name as a gift to his girlfriend. The poetry must have been good, because it apparently worked!

Luke wrote his first rap song in high school over a DMX beat, and he didn’t look back. A friend started a record label, and Luke and his friends signed on quickly, bringing their music out of bedrooms and notebooks and into the world. He still remembers hearing their rap songs booming from the car radio on the way to senior prom.

Sports were another important part of his life. He played basketball and football in high school, then continued playing in college until an injury changed his direction. He poured himself into music instead, attending poetry events around Harrisonburg, releasing mixtapes, performing, and producing Hip Hop shows.

In his mid-twenties, Luke began leading day-long creative writing workshops for elementary school students and young people in juvenile incarceration. He encouraged them to write from the heart—or, in his words, to write “something that hurt a little bit.” He often returned to the lesson he learned in middle school: writing through difficult feelings can help people understand themselves and invite others to see who they really are.

Luke also shared his own work with the students. At an open mic night at Charlie Parker's legendary Birdland Jazz Club, his adoptive mom sat in the crowd as he performed a song he had written about her. She had been unsure when he told her he wanted to become a Hip Hop artist, but the shift was immediate: when Luke came offstage, he could see her pride and knew she finally understood his passion for this art form.

That song became part of his workshops, where he would share the lyrics and ask students what they thought the piece was about. By sharing something so personal, Luke helped give young writers permission to tell their own stories. 

Luke has attended poetry slams up and down the East Coast, including in Newport, Rhode Island, Washington, D.C., and New York. Before moving to New Orleans, he produced weekly and monthly Hip Hop nights and opened for artists including HR of Bad Brains, Petey Pablo, Devin the Dude, Ras Kass, Riff Raff, Trae tha Truth, Dizzy Wright, and Illiterate Light. He also studied artist management through online classes at Berklee College of Music, gaining experience in everything from merchandise and event logistics to the many small details that make a show happen.

He and a friend also created a workshop to teach kids to build their own records. The curriculum included visiting a local record store, picking samples, creating songs, and writing short raps. The kids loved it, and Luke enjoyed the challenge of keeping up with a new generation’s musical tastes.

Luke moved to New Orleans in 2020, about 10 days before COVID hit and completely reshaped daily life. During lockdown, Luke rode his bike around New Orleans, exploring unfamiliar streets and falling more deeply in love with the city. It wasn’t the experience he expected, but he’s great at rolling with the punches, so he made the most of his adventure.

Today, Luke is the father of a three-year-old daughter, Nala, and he says becoming a dad has changed how he thinks about success, artistic purpose, and the life he wants to build. During Super Bowl LIX, he decided to parlay his years of experience in show production into working as a scenic installer at Downtown FabWorks. His grace and humor in the face of the chaos that is the event world quickly set him apart from the crowd.

When Luke thinks about heroes, he names artists who made room for tenderness and truth, including Jean-Michel Basquiat, James Baldwin, Amiri Baraka, Nikki Giovanni, and Sunni Patterson. In his twenties, he also admired performers like Machine Gun Kelly, Jim Morrison, and Cage the Elephant for the energy they brought to the stage. These days, though, his clearest hope is personal: “I want to help my daughter experience the world and get to feel some of the things that I’ve felt.”

To date, Luke’s favorite project is Bluebird, an album named after a Bukowski poem and recorded over several years. It includes a little of everything, including a voice memo and collaborations with artists such as Noelle Tannin and the Filthy No Nos. “It hits the sweet spot of letting go of trying to make something perfect and just letting it be enough,” Luke says.

The album was the first project he loved immediately, and its release reflected the same care and personality. A friend drew the cover art, Luke made the CDs, and he hosted a basement release party with a handmade photo wall, a tattoo artist giving stick-and-poke tattoos in the kitchen, and a room full of local artists. The intro track has since found listeners in places including Belgium and Brazil, appearing in DJ remixes far beyond New Orleans. “My heart was in that one,” he says. “My heart was in that one a lot.”

For Luke, art starts as an idea, becomes real through his hands, and then finds a new life with the people who receive it. He has a hand tattoo that reads “art project,” a reminder that he is still creating himself as he creates for others. It's also a reminder that putting art out into the world can change a life, because it has opened doors and created connections he never could have predicted.

Luke’s calm and constant presence has made a big difference to the Downtown FabWorks team over the last year and a half. We’re lucky to have someone like him balancing out the rhythm to our day, and we’re looking forward to what comes next in his artistic career outside of our shop.
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Bring the vision. We’ll build the moment. Downtown FabWorks pairs serious fabrication skills with artists who know what it takes to move a crowd, own a stage, and make an experience hit. Ready to create something people can’t ignore? Get in touch today.