I have worked on so many projects over the last fourteen years I don’t even know where to begin. But here goes...

Chronologically speaking, I started my professional career teaching art to children in an integrated arts program. This program was a well developed synthesis of art, music and dance of which I was in charge of the Arts (painting, drawing, etc) portion. I learned how to manage classes full of children and young adults, all of different temperament, skill levels, and aptitudes. Also, I found that my Fine Art painting discipline was really bolstered by teaching.

Next I moved into Magazine Publishing with an active group of young entrepreneurs in Salt Lake. They published a monthly arts, culture, and commentary mag called “Listen?”. Although the people who started it were ‘clique-ee’, plagued by internal competition and a more than a little incompetence, I began really using image editing and publishing software, made alliances with other entrepreneurs, and was exposed to fine art buyers and sellers. From this experience I started Dyssidence Productions with Justin Knutson, threw two large scale concerts at an enormous venue in town, and a Suicide Awareness Benefit show. Also, through these contacts, I was plugged into the gallery scene which led to my first one-man show in Park City Utah through New Amsterdam Art exchange. The show was called ‘Rudiments’ and, before the bastard who ran the gallery disappeared with half of my artwork, was considered a successful show netting some press and many sales.

Then I moved to Providence RI. A far cry from the Salt Lake scene, for sure. I was quickly plugged in to the active art scene in Providence by my ‘Listen?’ days cohort -Phil Ciaccio (Phil and I did most of our design work under ‘Advaria’, he moved back to New England and I followed a few years later. We continue to both use Advaria to this day). My first art show there was called ‘Straight Mixed Culture III’ and from then on there was a non-stop string of small and large gallery/poetry/music productions held in grand New England Underground style - edgy, wild, stylish, lucrative, etc etc etc. I often felt that I was in a three year long sex-in-the-city-meets-woodstock type movie. Crazy. I was also invited into a circle of artists led by Kyla Koburn. She ran an interior design company with insane genius Andy Trench, and did everything from initial ‘demo’ of a building to esoteric and high-style design, to custom electronics and woodworking. It was a tour de force of production methodologies and successful design experiments. If you’ve been to a cool, well designed, original, and progressive club in Providence, chances are Kyla designed it. In terms of professional experience, the culture at KCD was very loose but hailed 12 to 18 hour days, multiple projects simultaneously, we used all manner of analogue and digital techniques to produce and execute projects.  It was a 'whatever you can imagine - do' atmosphere.

Also in Providence I worked in-house and freelance for PR firm The Fenton Group.  One of my promotional box designs received an award but I never learned what the award was and never thought to document it.  All I can say was that it contained an iPod nano (when those still existed) and I built them all from scratch staying late nights at the office.  Good fun and hard work!  One page of their designs still exist in the Portfolio.

After moving back to Salt Lake the ‘old crew’ started a tee-shirt/web film company called ‘Donkey Style’ that lasted about 5 minutes (ha ha). I built a website, designed custom hoodies, tees, and underwear, and got our line into a specialty shop in Park City. It was fun. I also began working for a company called ‘Give Play’. I designed sprites and other custom images for an online game design library. (This seemed like the next ‘thing’ in game production.. until the iphone appeared. Fortunately virtually every component and methodology used in online custom game design applied directly to iPhone game design as well.)

From there I did a bunch of paintings, had a child, made some apps, had some life changing epiphanies, etc etc.

I’ve been working at XimoRocks for four years now as a lead designer. I’ve designed at very least half a dozen each of every kind of ‘thing’ that can be designed while working there. Websites, web UI, online films, powerpoints for promotion, powerpoints for internal use, brochures, more brochures, cards, stationary, product design, bottle design, box design, shipping box design, 1 ounce serving packet design, swag, t-shirts, specialty clothing, electric signs, banner ads and animations, bulk emails, SEO arrays, sitemaps between 10 sites, 5 platforms, and 10 accounts, etc etc. And that’s just the design! To actually function, many of these things need some degree of programming and testing, there are numerous external services which need to be acquired and integrated (half of the job was managing accounts with printers, manufacturers, numerous web ‘things’, emailers, DNS accounts, survey software, analytics, third party devs, etc etc). Sooooo much fun, though!

Obviously the course of a career can take one away from their true loves and passions, sometimes. How I began in the industry, was illustrating and painting. Through all of it I’ve managed to write (literally) several thousand pages for a graphic novel series, illustrate that novel, and begin publishing it. I still think comic, concept work and Gallery Painting is what I do the best (strange bedfellows, I know). I’ve always made a steady stream of income from painting and Gallery work, and I still have more robots, spaceships and futuristic weapons in my mind than I know what to do with. Read Less