There's a precision to the prep work — the multiple color separations, lined up precisely on the screen, registered on the press and fighting everything that is never ideal about the process. But then it registers. You print another and the registration holds. One more and you're off — it turns into a rhythm. The station arm spins one direction, the print order in the opposite. Lift the screen, gentle push as you spin the station, drop the screen. It's all fluid. The movement is hypnotic. It's all process, it's an earned blank mind where you're monitoring the result and watching for drifts in registration, and allowing the work to appear.

Ted Sampley was the first boss I ever had that I respected. He served as a Green Beret in Vietnam — highly decorated — and back in the states he became a POW/MIA activist. He had a construction company, he was a Master Potter, he had the screenprinting shop with two very nice manual six-head presses, a significant textile oven, a full darkroom. And then upstairs he was putting out a monthly newspaper with a significant reach. He sold t-shirts that we printed downstairs and used the money to print newspapers and fight lawsuits. The papers were free and he distributed at the Wall. How are you going to make artwork for screen printing if you don't know screen printing? And so it began.

My first morning in Savannah was electricity in slow motion — my first time at a hostel, everything I own in the back of a car, a very real limit on funds, and somewhere to be. I got to the address for registration in that state, mostly calm, feeling clear, an absolute expectation of things working out precisely right. She said she had to have an address to enter the registration, so I asked if I could use hers until I had enough time to get my own. I found an apartment the next day — pure kismet. I moved in immediately.

Stone lithography on some of the largest remaining slabs in existence — the quarry empty. It was a screenprinting shop with the ceiling blown off. Matthew Eberle got fascinated with my willingness to experiment with things and I loved being in that space doing it. Knudsen for color theory and loved it. My last literature requirement I took Arthurian Legend — discussions on what could be considered a fact of the culture telling the story, and the disparate anchors it drew from other stories. A really engaging exploration of a mystery made perfect by not having a solution.

I realized a small detail off her father's product for wood treatment that meant very little to the building industry had major consequences in art supplies. The product created a semi-permeable barrier on cut wood that made it resistant to mold and mildew. Way down on page fifty-five — reduces the warping of cut wood. I was working with a company producing stretcher bars in China and shipping them here. I got some of it undyed, changed it to an amber yellow with a stable pigment that wouldn't migrate with the latex component, rebranded it Amber Archival with a little pen and ink dragonfly in an oval for the logo, reworked the product docs to focus on the new market, and pitched it to the Goldsteins. It went over.

The MS-DOS inventory system had unused categories that Terry had repurposed to track items in the dual-inventory failed system but he still used them. Half the items in the store wouldn't scan and had to be entered by hand. A system that got increasingly complex in response to an underlying flaw. Terry bowed out gracefully. I inherited his mess and I cleaned house. I had our tech guy extract our inventory and flash the system with our closest location — very little differences in categories or stock — our inventory numbers updated the fields and almost every item in the store began to scan. Six months later: new displays, organized upstock, expanded canvas selection. Then they got the sweet lease offer on a new store in the same shopping center. We set up a brand new store from scratch without closing the old one.

High-end decorative artist in Delray Beach. The pay was fair, the work was interesting and process-oriented. It was never the same job twice. Mostly atmospheric even textures, seamlessly applied across a surface. Two to four people working in a concerted rhythm to produce something that felt visually impossible. Color-centric sophisticated atmospheres. I really loved it.

I speak the language designers understand. You can tell me something feels too beige and needs to be more taupe and I can ask precise questions about how dark they are willing to go. I can offer solutions that fit the feel the designer has expressed for the room. I don't ask for the new color code from the Benjamin Moore swatch book — I offer a transparent glaze that will add a fine texture to respond to the light conditions from day to night without going flat and only responding correctly in one condition or the other.

I deseeded and depithed a pound of each along with a pound of Thai chilis for color. Buried them in salt, let the moisture pull through, then eventually be reabsorbed carrying the salt back into the cells overnight. Then fished them back out and ran them through the food processor to make a paste. Recombined the extraction salt and the paste, blending it thoroughly. The result was very wet but really beautiful. Then three dried chillis, rehydrated and blended with the rehydration water, emulsified in the food processor with pomace oil and a few cloves of garlic for depth. All blended together — a smoky but bright flavor where most of the heat came from the black peppers, the whole thing coming together as a slightly oiled salt that kept its crunch.

The loose material was scraped and what stayed was sprayed with an ultradeep interior base to lock it in place — keep the look, lose the chips. The ceiling was old paint layers wrinkled and falling away, we started there. Once the walls were built and we got back in, the shallow relief stone effect glaze went a little more to the green side. Very little natural light here and the color shift made the slightly redder wood stain practically glow.

It was 2018 when I invited Eric Gaard to the home studio in the basement, apologizing in advance for it, but he came. He was receptive to the epoxy pieces in particular and we talked about them at length. I was invited to produce a larger piece for inclusion in a 2019 show in the main gallery. A piece that would not fit through the basement door. I borrowed a building — one double door behind the center, in and out, no running water or climate control but it had electricity. I had lights and power strips in spades.

We ripped out the carpet and found hardwood floors that had never seen the light of day from the one previous owner. We painted and moved in three days before the pandemic lockdown. I made the space work, power or no. I ran lights on a home generator for a while. When that failed, I bought an inverter and a marine battery that worked well for a stereo and the lighting.

Everything that got burned away exposed something I didn't really understand was there. It's all there in the artwork made in the last three months at Precipice — the clarity. I can see the pattern repeat, not clearly enough to see it stretching into the future in the way that I would like to see, but enough to be aware of my location in it. I know no one is coming to do something for me, and I know that the chaos is the substrate. I'm just trying to find my peace with that and let it be home. The rest I just want to be a clear signal that feels authentic.

There's a precision to the prep work — the multiple color separations, lined up precisely on the screen, registered on the press and fighting everything that is never ideal about the process. But then it registers. You print another and the registration holds. One more and you're off — it turns into a rhythm. The station arm spins one direction, the print order in the opposite. Lift the screen, gentle push as you spin the station, drop the screen. It's all fluid. The movement is hypnotic. It's all process, it's an earned blank mind where you're monitoring the result and watching for drifts in registration, and allowing the work to appear.

Ted Sampley was the first boss I ever had that I respected. He served as a Green Beret in Vietnam — highly decorated — and back in the states he became a POW/MIA activist. He had a construction company, he was a Master Potter, he had the screenprinting shop with two very nice manual six-head presses, a significant textile oven, a full darkroom. And then upstairs he was putting out a monthly newspaper with a significant reach. He sold t-shirts that we printed downstairs and used the money to print newspapers and fight lawsuits. The papers were free and he distributed at the Wall. How are you going to make artwork for screen printing if you don't know screen printing? And so it began.

My first morning in Savannah was electricity in slow motion — my first time at a hostel, everything I own in the back of a car, a very real limit on funds, and somewhere to be. I got to the address for registration in that state, mostly calm, feeling clear, an absolute expectation of things working out precisely right. She said she had to have an address to enter the registration, so I asked if I could use hers until I had enough time to get my own. I found an apartment the next day — pure kismet. I moved in immediately.

Stone lithography on some of the largest remaining slabs in existence — the quarry empty. It was a screenprinting shop with the ceiling blown off. Matthew Eberle got fascinated with my willingness to experiment with things and I loved being in that space doing it. Knudsen for color theory and loved it. My last literature requirement I took Arthurian Legend — discussions on what could be considered a fact of the culture telling the story, and the disparate anchors it drew from other stories. A really engaging exploration of a mystery made perfect by not having a solution.

I realized a small detail off her father's product for wood treatment that meant very little to the building industry had major consequences in art supplies. The product created a semi-permeable barrier on cut wood that made it resistant to mold and mildew. Way down on page fifty-five — reduces the warping of cut wood. I was working with a company producing stretcher bars in China and shipping them here. I got some of it undyed, changed it to an amber yellow with a stable pigment that wouldn't migrate with the latex component, rebranded it Amber Archival with a little pen and ink dragonfly in an oval for the logo, reworked the product docs to focus on the new market, and pitched it to the Goldsteins. It went over.

The MS-DOS inventory system had unused categories that Terry had repurposed to track items in the dual-inventory failed system but he still used them. Half the items in the store wouldn't scan and had to be entered by hand. A system that got increasingly complex in response to an underlying flaw. Terry bowed out gracefully. I inherited his mess and I cleaned house. I had our tech guy extract our inventory and flash the system with our closest location — very little differences in categories or stock — our inventory numbers updated the fields and almost every item in the store began to scan. Six months later: new displays, organized upstock, expanded canvas selection. Then they got the sweet lease offer on a new store in the same shopping center. We set up a brand new store from scratch without closing the old one.

High-end decorative artist in Delray Beach. The pay was fair, the work was interesting and process-oriented. It was never the same job twice. Mostly atmospheric even textures, seamlessly applied across a surface. Two to four people working in a concerted rhythm to produce something that felt visually impossible. Color-centric sophisticated atmospheres. I really loved it.

I speak the language designers understand. You can tell me something feels too beige and needs to be more taupe and I can ask precise questions about how dark they are willing to go. I can offer solutions that fit the feel the designer has expressed for the room. I don't ask for the new color code from the Benjamin Moore swatch book — I offer a transparent glaze that will add a fine texture to respond to the light conditions from day to night without going flat and only responding correctly in one condition or the other.

I deseeded and depithed a pound of each along with a pound of Thai chilis for color. Buried them in salt, let the moisture pull through, then eventually be reabsorbed carrying the salt back into the cells overnight. Then fished them back out and ran them through the food processor to make a paste. Recombined the extraction salt and the paste, blending it thoroughly. The result was very wet but really beautiful. Then three dried chillis, rehydrated and blended with the rehydration water, emulsified in the food processor with pomace oil and a few cloves of garlic for depth. All blended together — a smoky but bright flavor where most of the heat came from the black peppers, the whole thing coming together as a slightly oiled salt that kept its crunch.

The loose material was scraped and what stayed was sprayed with an ultradeep interior base to lock it in place — keep the look, lose the chips. The ceiling was old paint layers wrinkled and falling away, we started there. Once the walls were built and we got back in, the shallow relief stone effect glaze went a little more to the green side. Very little natural light here and the color shift made the slightly redder wood stain practically glow.

It was 2018 when I invited Eric Gaard to the home studio in the basement, apologizing in advance for it, but he came. He was receptive to the epoxy pieces in particular and we talked about them at length. I was invited to produce a larger piece for inclusion in a 2019 show in the main gallery. A piece that would not fit through the basement door. I borrowed a building — one double door behind the center, in and out, no running water or climate control but it had electricity. I had lights and power strips in spades.

We ripped out the carpet and found hardwood floors that had never seen the light of day from the one previous owner. We painted and moved in three days before the pandemic lockdown. I made the space work, power or no. I ran lights on a home generator for a while. When that failed, I bought an inverter and a marine battery that worked well for a stereo and the lighting.

Everything that got burned away exposed something I didn't really understand was there. It's all there in the artwork made in the last three months at Precipice — the clarity. I can see the pattern repeat, not clearly enough to see it stretching into the future in the way that I would like to see, but enough to be aware of my location in it. I know no one is coming to do something for me, and I know that the chaos is the substrate. I'm just trying to find my peace with that and let it be home. The rest I just want to be a clear signal that feels authentic.