Bio

I'm no Superman, I'm just Clark Kent.

"Art is anything you can get away with. "
-Marshall McLuhan

We value a great many things in our adult lives.

Money, Resources, Power, Real Estate.

But we tend to overlook the things in life that are really important.

Instinct. Skill. Originality. Creativity.

Without these things, nothing else seems worth having. I haven't lived a very long life, yet, but I'd like to think I've learned a lot about how the world works. Or, at least, how it should work. I'm great like that. I mean, from an outsider's point of view, my life might look pretty run-of-the-mill. Born in Kansas, raised on a farm, public school, etc. But from the right angle, you might see a few chapters of my life that are worth a second glance. Which is really what it's all about, right? Perspective. It's all about how you look at things. And to get me, to really understand where I'm at and where I'm going, you have to take a real good look at where I've been. I promise, my story isn't as boring as you might think.

I was born in Wichita, KS in 1987, an Autumn baby to a single mom. Not that I'm complaining about it now, for what little she had to work with, my Ma did a damn good job of taking care of me. My father was some worthless P.O.S. I never had the displeasure of meeting, and from what I heard about him, I'm far better off for it. Again, not that I'm starting up some sob story or anything- my mom met a pretty great guy when I was about a year and a half old named Jeff, and unlike a lot of other guys she could have ended up with, he was the type who didn't care what sort of baggage she might have been carrying. He married her when I was two, we moved to a small town called Emporia, and they've been together ever since. I may have not had a father, but I had one hell of a Dad.

Mom was an artist, she was really into painting and pastels and stuff, so it was no surprise that, as I got older, I started picking up paper and pencil and doodling all over the place. But between taking care of me and my younger half siblings, she didn't have a lot of time to show me the ropes of drawing, so I had to learn on my own wherever I could. And most of that came from watching Cartoons and reading Comic Books. I used to bury my nose in He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, Pirates of Dark Water, X-Men, Spiderman, and all other manner of animated glory, and for the life of me, even as I got older, I never lost the love I had for them. 

By the time I hit highschool, I was taking every art class I could worm my way into- Intro to Drawing, Sculpture, Creative Design, Jewelry and Metals. Anything that let me get creative became the center of my universe. By senior year, I was the student aid to the head of the art department- which basically meant I organized the supplies, helped grade stuff, and spent every spare moment I had in the studio showing the freshman how to not fail. Those were great times. I permanently had a pencil tucked behind my ear each day, and a notebook under my arm, always ready to draw or doodle something. Great times.

Highschool was my first experience with a long-term project, when I created a series of short comic strips my freshman year about an insomniac monkey named Bonzai who continuously hallucinated about a flying, talking banana named "Japh". It was a wacky, nonsensical undertaking that came from me being bored in my algebra class, and it didn't last more than a few months before I moved on to my next, and probably most well known project, School Daze. A few friends and I got together to do a comic strip about the four of us trying to survive highschool, and what started as something that only the people at our lunch table would read became my highschool trademark. It may have been nothing more than a few panels about squirrel jokes and hacky-sack, but for some reason, people liked it, and I kept doing it until the end of my Senior year, when the four creators went their separate ways after graduation.
 

Immediately after highschool, I took my first shot at higher education, when I enrolled at Flint Hills Technical College. I started out in the Computer Programming Department, under the impression that CPD was the only way I was going to get any training in 3D animation, until the end of third quarter (I was failing miserably, I had no idea how to code a damn thing) when they informed me that they'd made a mistake and that the Graphic Arts Technology program actually had a class in 3D modeling and animation. After a mountain of paperwork, and plenty of swearing, I transferred to the GAT classes, where I got my first experience in digital art with Photoshop, Illustrator, and Lightwave 3D.
 

Still, I was in a not so pleasant place in my life by then, trying to save a failing relationship with my fiancee at the time and looking for a job in a degrading local economy, and I was forced to drop out in order to make time to fix my life. Three months later, my fiancee left me and I wound up having to move in with my best friend until I could find a new job. I spent the next year unemployed, not including a holiday job as a Gamestop employee (Still one of my favorite jobs EVER), until I caught a break when a friend of my dad's hooked me up with a job as a cook in a little wing place across the street from the courthouse. I spent a good year down there, and learned a lot, until the owner closed it to focus more of his attention on the bar he owned down the street. He cut me a break, hiring me as a barback, and I spent another six months carrying kegs and cases of beer up two flights of stairs, until my parents- both career bartenders- taught me how to sling drinks proper. I still work at the bar, even now, and though my job is far from easy, I can't say I don't love my job.

Still, I had little to no creative outlet back then, and finally, with the help of my family, I managed to get back into school- this time at Emporia State University as a full time student majoring in Graphic Design. School is hard, and I'm still having trouble with me gen-eds, but I'm pushing through, and with the help of family and friends, I just might be able to make it all the way through this time. 

As for these days? Between serving drinks, playing pool, doing homework, and spending time with my sister's 1-year old daughter, I have a new project with a new group of friends. Technographic Media is a small-time movement that centers on using digital art to show the world a new side of life, to express those feelings of originality and creativity. And we always live by Marshal McLuhan's famous words. "Art is anything you can get away with." And let me tell you, we're learning there's quite a bit we can get away with.