My wife rachel, our daughter Winona, and me.

The 2019 East Austin Studio Tour was my first ‘solo’ show. I made a lot of new friends and sold 4 Pieces. The first day of the tour was Nov. 16 2019- exactly one year before I was laid off from my job. I had a steady, reliable, salaried income as an art director for 8 years. To add to the situation, my wife Rachel was 5 months pregnant with our first child. it was going to be hard to find a graphic design job, during the holidays, and then turn around in the new year and ask for paternity leave… Luckily I got the biggest bead art commission I had ever gotten in early January 2019 and I decided that I was going to take a hiatus from computer based design and focus on my bead art and our baby for a year and see what happened.

The first things that anyone asks me when they see my art is “how long does it take to make this?”. I had been making bead art as a side gig for 4-5 years and I didnt really know how much time it took to complete a piece. I would put in a couple hours after work on weeknights and if i was really into the project I would work full days on the weekends. But it was sporadic and I didnt bother trying to keep track of my hours. After making beadwork - full time - for a year I have a much better understanding of how long it takes to complete a piece.

2019 was a productive year- I completed 37 new beaded pieces of art ten of which were commissions. I built a new website showcasing my bead art. I designed a quick-deploy photo studio in my art studio so I can document and photograph my work (and not spend hours building and breaking down a backdrop). The noteable project of the year was designing a concert poster featuring my bead art for Shakey Graves’ Red Rocks concert. The guitar sold for $30k to support mymusicRx.org. I got a feature in Texas Monthly. It was online only, but it was a step in the right direction. Exactly one year after being laid off I opened the doors to my first solo exhibition of my work!

Big Medium’s East Austin Studio Tour (EAST) is a free, annual, self‑guided art event spanning two weekends in November. EAST provides opportunities for the public to meet the artists of Austin in their creative spaces.

This was the view of the space as you walked in the door.

Interior Panorama of the art show and space. I built ten 4’X8’ walls and erected them inside Allan’s studio. I was pretty nervous about a freak-accident wall collapse, so much art would be damaged. Fortunately the walls held for two weekends without… — Interior Panorama of the art show and space. I built ten 4’X8’ walls and erected them inside Allan’s studio. I was pretty nervous about a freak-accident wall collapse, so much art would be damaged. Fortunately the walls held for two weekends without a problem. Big Thanks to my friend Stuart Sharpe for helping me build these walls.

The space was generously hosted by my friend Allan Gill. He let me build 3 large walls in his recording studio (East End Audio Arts) and take over his space for the 2 weekends of the Tour. The location was amazing, it was one door down from Canopy the epicenter of the whole tour. There was tons of traffic, we estimated there was 300-500 people coming through each day.

I do all my work in solitude, in my home. It was so nice to be able to talk to people about what I do, See their reactions to my work. One woman (vegan) came to the door and quickly turned and walked off when she saw all the skulls. on the second saturday of the tour my friend stopped by my show to look at the work and recognized an old art history professor that she’d had at St. Eds. We talked for a minute and the professor told us she had to get moving because she was grading papers. She had assigned her students to go to weekend one of EAST and write ‘reflections’ on what moved them. 2 people wrote reflections about my work! The professor was following up and grading their reflections on weekend two!

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2019 First year of full time self employment as a bead artist and the East Austin Studio Tour