Biography

Born: november 19, 1969 -> i am a scorpio (so, that gives you a good idea of where i am coming from. ) not to say that being born in newark, new jersey doesn't say enough already. i drew ALOT as a kid... about as much as i draw now. in fact, i can't think of anything until i put it in a visual form... which makes it a bitch to program.

i went to public school in irvington. when lauren hill says "beef with chancellor" well, that was my gramma school. well the public one. i was deported to Our lady of the Valley in orange and have alot of catholic school stories to share at the pub. i attended seton hall preparatory school for high school. man i loved shp. great years there. yeah, hazard zet forward.

for college, i was lucky to attend allegheny college in mudv-- meadville pa. in the middle of nowhere, a cloud is now hanging over meadville, raining on its lonely students. except if it's parents weekend. then it is nice and bright. agon-- allegheny is a great school. i was active in the radio station WARC. i played rugby (well, as best i could due to the fact i am near-sighted). i experimented with visual forms. for a long time i was resentful for the art dept there for not providing the discipline that i wanted. however, it was only years later that i realized they taught me how to think critically about the objects d'art i was making. by the time i got around to getting the chops; i could communicate what i wanted to express verbally... which is important. also, i worked in the computer art lab way back in the eighties... ah, the amiga *sob sob*. there i met stuart.

the day i got into the new york academy of art i cried. i was making $.50 an hour at pearl paint in virgina... with nowhere to go. because allegheny opted for the amiga, i never worked on a mac and didn't know photoshop (much to the dismay of my parents: "we spent all this money and you can't get a job?") the academy was trans formative. one of the youngest people there, i busted arse drawing/painting for a good 12-15 hours a day. i can say that i learned to see there. the teachers were brilliant. there i met alexis.

after grad school, there was a period of about four years that were "dark ages". again, i couldn't get a job using a computer because the only thing we worked on in grad school was oil on canvas. i went back to live at home with my parents; working at a industrial frame maker for $7 an hour. i made the leap into NYC as i realized that i needed to go where the $$ is. began working as a decorative painter/ mural artist for the next three years. worked alot with Richard Smith; a colleague from the academy, richard is easily one of the best decorative / mural /painters living today. his clients are uber wealthy. his work is passed on just by word of mouth.

i was down in fla working with rich in a client's house when i realized that this wasn't going to take me far. it was 1997 and i didn't even know how to use a pc, much less own one. one day, i realized that my parents had given me a sears mastercard with $5,000 in case of an emergency. that weekend, i went out and bought the best pc i could for, like, $2,800. i spent all my spare time on that thing. lost a girlfriend. bought knock off adobe software. taught myself EVERYTHING.

i landed a gig at a fine fragrance company by sheer luck. i sweated it out. i didn't know the programs well so i stayed late to work on the "real stuff". everyone was thinking that i was working on their projects. lol. i went from graphic artist ->graphic designer-> artist -> artistic director in 4 years. i began to program more. best job i ever had.... well...

i moved down to dc. because of the work i did at the fragrance house was proactive; i didn't have "URLS" to show prospective employers. the ad agencies in DC are a mystery to me... and my work was the same to them. so i got work from NYC. i eventually began teaching at westwood college and that was the second best job i ever had. during this time, i was engaged in a stock photo startup with a couple of friends. it was through this that i found drupal. my working paradigm shifted as i began creating websites with dynamic databases rather than Flash.... so much better

a couple of years later i am back in NYC. my home. as expected, the freelance thing didn't work out so well as the economy soured. I am very, very lucky to land my present gig at sony doing Drupal full time. i get to work with a killer team, doing what i love, supporting world-class artists. my weekends are my own to paint, read and work on my online comic. I am in the best relationship of my life, things are hunky dory with the family... and my sister has a beautiful son :)

yeah, life is good :)