The “EP” version

Thanks to my artist Mom, my formal art education started with Life Drawing classes at age 11 (Montserrat School of Art, in Beverly MA.). I was an Art Major in HS and also started taking B&W photography classes. So drawing & photography were of interest to me, early on. I got into Boston Univ. School of Fine Art. A classical art program with an emphasis on anatomy and drawing, painting & sculpting from the figure, still-life & landscape. After 2 years I found that my initial goal, of becoming a medical illustrator, was no longer of interest.

I left BU and won a MA., state-wide contest that a local chain of stores (Bldg.#19) was conducting. They were looking  for a cartoonist/copywriter/photographer, to work in their art department. I was responsible for 8 of the 24 pages in the monthly circular, written mostly with self-deprecating humor & cartoons to support our “wacky” style. I also did all of the B&W product photography and processed & printed in their on-site dark room. Lastly I was responsible for large-scale murals on the front of their 6 stores & signage within the stores that fostered employee recognition, via caricatures. While I worked at Bldg. #19, I continued night school art classes at Mass College of Art, in children’s book illustration and animation.

After a little more than a year at Bldg. #19, I took a leave of absence and went backpacking around Europe. When I returned, it was clear that the Bldg. #19 art dept. was not my “last stop” and I decided to go back to school full-time. While I appreciate the classical art foundation BU had provided, I felt I needed a more commercial art education than they offered, so I transferred to the School of Visual Art, in NYC. During my 3 years at SVA, and after, I freelanced as a caricaturist...paste-up artist (pre-computer prepping of articles or ads for print using wax or rubber cement) at Interview Magazine (just after Warhol died) & New York Magazine...animator on an educational video (“Once Upon A Planet”), B&W darkroom tech, for the Rusk Institute in NYC (Cancer research)...wedding lightman and photographer...marker-comp illustrator...sold hand made, silk-screened t-shirts, I also did my share, of the prerequisite rite-of-passage for starving artists...waiting tables.

During my first 5 years in NYC, I was constantly drawing people on my subway commutes. I have about 60 sketchpads from those days, full of NYC characters. I also discovered that I loved drawing musicians, playing live. (the music had a powerful impact on how I drew). A friend I’d known since age 3, Jonathan Levine, moved to NYC to take a job with William Morris Agency, as an agent in the music dept. For the next the next decade or so, thanks to Jonathan, I was fortunate enough to get good seats and often backstage after the show, to show the band my sketches. I have signed drawings from Eric Clapton, The Dead, The Allman Brothers, Pat Metheny, Joe Lovano, John Scofield, James Taylor, Grover Washington Jr. & Doctor John, to name a few. A couple of times Jonathan got me on-stage, so I could see detail better (2 Dead shows & the Allman Bros.). Not an experience I’ll soon forget! Even though I was star-struck when I met these Rock icons, I did my best keep a lid on the wide-eyed fan inside and very often we talked about art more than anything else.

The thing about drawing moving musicians and subway people, is that it requires the sketch artist to draw quickly in order to capture them before they changed poses or trains. I’d heard that TV storyboard marker comp artists (illustrators that drew the advertising creative concepts for client presentations) could make decent money. The key was that you had to draw fast, which I was able to do, thanks to my subway & musician experiences. Fed up with the starving artist thing, I took a marker drawing course at SVA, Continuing Education. The teacher was an Art Director at a small advertising/marketing agency (AMC...now defunct). He announced at the beginning of the semester, that he was going to offer the best student a job. I won the job and my advertising career began. 

After a year at AMC, I got a job at Ogilvy, doing paste-up, on the night shift (8pm-4am) making overnight client revisions to Liberty Travel ads. After 2 years I ended up running the paste-up & presentation studio. Ogilvy was pitching a ton of New Business & needed a dedicated Production Mgr., so I moved to that role. It proved a very high-pressure job, that I held for almost 7 years, helping to win $1.2B in New Business during that tenure.

Once my son, Zach, was born (2000), I knew that the 100 hour weeks I’d been working, were no longer an option. I was able to move laterally to co-manage the Creative Support Digital Studio. During this time, I managed some top-level digital artists. I’d always despised managers who didn’t know what the people under them knew, so I got a laptop & taught myself Photoshop and Illustrator on my 4 hour round-trip, daily commute. This proved important as most of my illustration and all of the photo-retouching,
is done in these 2 applications.

After 20 years of working my way up at Ogilvy, I realized that I’d worked my way right out of the work for which I’d gone to art school. I managed to get into the Photo Retouching group, where I’ve worked since 2011 as a Photo Retoucher and Concept Illustrator. As a result I’m much happier as a “worker-bee” graphic artist, than in middle-management hell.

During my time in the Retouching dept. I was tapped by our division’s CEO, for an excellent project. We had 11 internal video-edit suites, that lacked windows. Long hours spent in these windowless rooms felt claustrophobic. The initial assignment was to go to each of the 5 boroughs of NYC & shoot iconic panoramic images, which would then be printed and applied as “wallpaper” to these suites. While it was definitely a fun assignment, panoramas are fairly easy to do and I didn’t feel as though they’d truly “showcase” my talents. As part of the original presentation, I not only photoshopped the panoramas into the edit suite walls, but also included a section for full-door collages & a wall for my 9PanelPoems. The CEO picked three, one from each category and I was off and running. Over the next 2 years, when work was slow and the weather decent, I went out and shot; the Brooklyn Bridge, Prospect Park, Staten Island Ferry, The HighLine, Central Park, City Island, the World’s Fair Unisphere in Queens, NY Botanical Gardens-Bronx, Washington Square Park and the Freedom Tower (several of them more than once). I couldn’t believe I was being paid to do something I’d do for free, on my own time...for fun! 

Since then, I’ve done large-scale wall installations for a pool club, Ogilvy WW Headquarters in NYC’s corporate cafeteria and a local ice cream shop (Purple Cow). I’ve also been tapped as the illustrator for a Yoga-based children’s book (“Yoga All Around” by Gina Cascone). 

While my art education has been long and varied, I’d be remiss to leave out two other major impacts on my life...Outward Bound and Yoga. I attended 2 OB courses; 28 day course in ME. multi-element trip (sailing canoeing, rock climbing) & 14 day FL. Keys (sailing). They both had profoundly positive effects on my life. Both trips were proving grounds, for how much I can achieve through perseverance. In 2000 I started practicing Yoga. 20 years & -50 lbs. later, I continue to practice, at least 4-5 days/wk. In 2013, I started teaching Yoga as well. My ability to sit with an image for long hours, till I have it just right, draws upon both of those educational experiences.

So I’m pretty happy, that the many years since those first Life Drawing classes, I’m finding work in my original two loves of Illustration and Photography. 

If you need a truly unique piece of art or gift, please reach out! (...and thanks for reading the “EP version” ; )