Homecoming

Overview| Ahh, high school, such interesting memories. Even though our football team stank, that never stopped homecoming from being a good time. This 2001 homecoming button is one of my favorite pieces of design work ever. My friend Roxie and I, as the two people tasked with designing homecoming buttons, were having something of an unofficial competition, and I can safely say I knocked her out of the park. Yes, the button lacks a "theme" per se, but I designed this bad boy at about two in the morning, six hours before it had to go to press. Pressure works wonders, right?

Prom

Overview| The picture in the back was a poster I designed for my junior year prom. I was asked as a favor to whip something up fast, and then I was surprised to find my sketchy design plastered around the school and used on the tickets. I had a second crack at it as a senior. Again, my class wasn't really good with themes, but I wanted something simple, elegant, so I did some bubbly clouds and shooting stars. I thought it fitting for the dance's souvenir champaign flutes.

Sketches and Doodles, oh my!

Overview| Even though I was never headed for art school, I think I can say by senior year, I was the class's de facto artist in residence...at least when it came to doodles and sketches. People wanted a "tech knight?" Okay. A "postcard" from hell? Sure thing. Uh, a communist propaganda poster? Cool. High school was fun like that. I stopped ever drawing on my own behalf and just waited for someone to come around and ask me for something. I ended up spending tons of time doing drawings in yearbooks, none more elaborate than the comprehensive collage for my favorite history teacher on the right.

Tee-Shirt Time

Overview| As a senior class officer, my sales pitch was that I'd design a (relatively) cool t-shirt, which I think I did. The class theme was something about breaking through to the other side, so, hey, a devil exploding out of earth worked for me. As long as it was colorful and cool, high schoolers were happy, something the classes before and after mine didn't really get. Somewhere buried in Iowa I have a box of t-shirts I designed in high school...there was marching band and swim teams and some others I don't even remember. I'm still partial to the earth-exploding blue devil, though.

The Zeus

Overview| This, my first oil painting, took a long time to do and, looking at it now in my parents' foyer, it really is't that good. Still, I went all out on those clouds, and I even used foam and paper mache and spraypaint to make the demi-god things reaching up at ol'Zeus. Alas, it's sad my potential as an artist has faded over the years, leaving all this average stuff as the highlight of my creative career!