This Week We Feature Young Professional Tejon E. K. Forbes who channeled his interest from computer designing to become a budding interior designer. Photo:VINO

Tejon E.K. Forbes is a graduate of Ai Miami International University of Art and Designs and the holder of a Bachelors of Fines Arts in Interior Design. Photo: Provided

Tejon E. K. Forbes manages his own business ‘Enrique Estaban Interiors’. Photo: Provided

Our Young professional for the week also loves music and has a taste for trendy fashion. Photo: Provided

As a matter of fact, the dollars that are required in what we would want to call ‘Hard Guava Season’ is already beginning to roll in for this budding 24-year old entrepreneur. It was only in June of 2013 that he returned to his homeland after pursuing academic studies at the Ai Miami International University of Art and Designs.

He is the proud holder of a Bachelors of Fines Arts in Interior Design and currently owns and manages his own business ‘Enrique Estaban Interiors’ even as he plays a major part in the daily operations of his father’s private company, ‘Rufred Forbes and Associates’.

Forbes, who is a resident of the East End community of the Virgin Islands, never thought that would be the career that would position him to becoming one of several promising prominent young business entrepreneurs in the VI as his love and passion for music was guiding him in the direction of becoming an international musician. He also wants to follow the footsteps of his father who is a contractor and architecture.

“I thought I was going to be something of a classic pianist, or a music teacher or something like that but never would I have thought that I would have ended up doing designs.”

“I was always interested in being on the job seeing things being built and stuff like that,” he told Virgin Islands News Online. As he grew out of the boyhood days he found himself being hooked to a game called ‘The Sims’, a simulation game on the computer that was designed to help persons simulate their lives.

Nature had another plan laid out and thanks to the ‘gadgets’ of those days made even better today, Mr. Forbes described getting into his career path as a funny story.

“But I spent most of my time (on the game) building houses just to get to design the interior… I spent a lot of time on the game, an awful lot of time on it.”

As a result of the game, he thought he should consider becoming a graphic designer. At that time he was just about 19 years old.

Forbes said his brother, who was keeping a ‘close eye’ on what he was doing with the game and having heard his interest in graphic designing, one day told him since he spent most of his time doing interior designing, he should just do it.

“But I wasn’t aware that interior designing encompasses a lot more than just decorating.” That he learnt after taking his brother’s advice and moving on to university. “I learnt that it had to do a lot with the flow, there is psychology involved in colours and circulation path and the way things align…”

He said his name represents who he is: T – Tenacious, E- Endearing, J - Jovial, O – Optimistic and N – Noble. “That basically sums up who I am as a person but as a designer I think I am more to the retro-modern style of the spectrum with an Island twist because I am from the Islands so I am not afraid of using colours,” he said.

One thing that was clearly evident was that his passions are in the arts, graphic arts, music, fashion and dancing.  He had fallen into the grasp of one teacher who guided him to incorporating his love and passion for music to simulate with his new found career in the arts.

“He (the teacher) said to me one time, you get the design aspect but what makes you special as a designer…so he told me to go back to that place and that time that inspired me the most as I was growing up. So that was music.”

That of course was not such a hard task. “One time I designed a staircase that looked like an auto saxophone… so music is still being there it’s just being abstracted into a different form.”

Before his return to the Virgin Islands, Tejon spent one year working in the USA and has left his signature on a condominium Sean ‘P. Diddy/Puff Daddy’ Combs had purchased for his mother Janice Smalls. At the time he was working for Sharron Lewis Designs, Central Central. He had done his internship there and returned to work full time.

Home was calling, so after feeling accomplished in leaving his imprints in such a celebrity piece, he decided it was time to return home and make his mark in building the place he loves the most which holds nature’s little secret, the Virgin Islands.

Throughout his young life of varied experiences, he said that he has come to the realization that life has many paths and to his fellow young brothers and sisters in the Virgin Islands and even further afield he had this advise, “Remember that in this life anything can happen. This is something that I have come to realize and it’s what I would say to any and everyone; anything can happen but just remember that God has got it in control. Whether it’s good, bad or indifferent, just know that anything can happen, your life can be changed in the wink of an eye. It’s all in God’s plan you just have to take it in strides; life is as such that it’s going to be constantly changing. Stay focused and have a keen eye on where it wants to take you.”