About Me
I was born and raised in Toledo, Ohio, on a steady diet of 1970's pop culture, science fiction and comic books. My mother was an artist of considerable talent and my father, a literal jack of all trades, worked as an assistant promotions director for the local NBC affiliate. My early days were spent drawing and preparing myself to replace the TV Batman when he was too old to carry on his heroic duties.
It was in grade school that I discovered that art was an excellent way to make friends and impress girls. In high school, I moved from doodling in the margins of my homework assignments to cartooning and contributing artist for the high school paper. Not long after, College time arrived and I realized that the Batman thing was NOT going to work. Taking sketch book in hand, I marched off to Bowling Green State University (BGSU) and entered their small, but proud, graphic design program. While at BGSU, I wrote and drew a daily comic strip, FATMAN, for the campus paper. I also took a summer job drawing caricatures at Cedar Point, an amusement park on the shores of Lake Erie. Nothing will toughen your artistic hide faster than being told you suck by a group of drunken park-goers in tank tops and spandex. However, I was able to put the experience from Cedar Point to good use … improvement in drawing skills, the ability to generate quick design sketches and doodles for free drinks from cute waitresses.
After college I ventured forth into the cold, cruel world and quickly found employment in various design houses around Toledo. Even though I had put creating comics on the back burner, I found a way to incorporate that aesthetic into my professional portfolio. I now work as a Senior Art Director for Gale, a part of Cengage Learning, a world leader in e-research and educational publishing for libraries, schools and businesses, in Farmington Hills, Michigan. The bulk of my design work is focused on creating a "face" for content in the K-12 market. In addition, I've produced the company's holiday eCard (2001-2003, 2005). Over the years, my professional work has won awards from local design clubs in Ohio and Michigan.
In my spare time, I volunteer my talent at my children's school, having designed their school logo and various activity pages for the Kindergarten class. I'm also experimenting with small-press comics (self-published) and meet weekly with a local group of well-known cartoonists in Hamtramck, Michigan. As well as small-press, I'm working on an idea for a daily, syndicated comic strip and enjoy creating humorous, vintage-style advertising posters. I'm married to Suzanne Boissy, an excellent artist in her own right, and together we've collaborated on three "projects" culminating in our children: Jay, Foxx and Cosmo.
My resumé can be downloaded here. [PDF 160k]