Let's start at the beginning...

I have always been interested in drawing. As a child I would watch my Mom doodle away as she talked on the phone. She would just start to draw shapes around letters or numbers on the page. When she was done, the page would be covered with various designs. While I was still very young my Mom bought me a Super Friends drawing table. It was basically a plastic light table but I used it all the way through college. I'm not sure if that was my official start but it was definitley an early step.

I attended St. Teresa of Avila from 1st grade through 8th. I was always on the creative side of things here. It was in grade school that I started my professional career. I would sell drawings of football helmets to all the boys in class. The Bengals had just changed to the striped helmets so it was a busy time.

High School started in the fall of 1985 and I had taken the entrance test to be accepted into the Art program at Elder High School. High school was a great time for me. I tried playing football but after the first season I realized I was better at watching football instead of playing. Elder had a great teacher in Robert Beemon. He was crazy enough to be entertaining but in a way that you ended up learning things anyway. I took as many art and art related classes I could. Photography, Mechanical Drawing, Geometry & "Computer Science" were all classes I enjoyed and used to further my goals. In May of 1989, high school ended and I had accumulated four scholarship offers and was ready to head off to college.

I attended college at The Art Academy of Cincinnati. This was a wonderful time for me, creatively. I experienced a mix of classes and people that were so diverse and different than I was used to. Computers were just starting to be used in design and I was interested in them but not nearly as much as the painting, printmaking and sculpture classes. Art History turned out to be one of the surprises for me. I actually enjoyed it. Let me rephrase that, I enjoyed learning about it, not being tested. My junior and senior years started to lean towards the computer end of design. I think I was afraid that I needed to get a real job. Little did I know that the computers that seemed to hinder my creativity in the past would evolve into what they are today. These days (for better or worse) I can't imagine doing anything creative that does not involve the computer to some extent.

Education never ends. If you stop learning and pushing yourself, you die. This is one of the reasons I have no plans on ever retiring. Creating something from nothing may not require much physical labor but it really keeps you sharp upstairs.  I stay up to date these days by online training and my old standby... trial and error (I learn plenty this way).