Family

- [Interviewer] Now what did your parents do as profession? Like what was your mom and dad's? - [Interviewee] My mom's an artist. So, she would always paint and she taught painting classes. That's probably where some of my teaching chaps come from. It's just, I used to sit in my mom's class when she taught painting. Everything from traditional oil painting to, it's called tole and decorative painting, where somebody like, just think if you bought an old milk can, and you framed it and then you'd, kind of, paint folk art on it. My mom's done a lot of that and it's really cool. I didn't really appreciate it that much as a kid, but I look at it now and I go, "It's pretty nice." So, my mom drew all the time. My dad, not any kind of creative bonus body, just saying. But he grew up around it. I was creative, he supported me. My mom supported me. And so it's and they'd support my two daughters who both, kind of, drew. I did a talk a few years ago, where I had my dad in the talk, and I'm trying to make the point that anybody can draw. And my dad doesn't draw on a regular basis. So I said, "Okay dad, I want you to draw something," and he's, "I can't," you know. I said, that's what I want you to draw. And so he drew two little dog piles of poop for my presentation, and then-- - [Interviewer] Were they good? - [Interviewee] Yeah, they were great. They got a laugh that's what I wanted. And then I took a picture of the back of his head, because one Christmas, my daughter asked if she could draw a face on the back of his head with the sharpie and he let my daughter do that. So, I kind of, captured that. That was pretty fine. - [Interviewer] It's fantastic. - [Interviewee] Yeah. - [Interviewer] So what was the path? Like after college. Did you get out and start working as a designer right away? - [Interviewee] It took me about eight months after I graduated, to find a job. At that time, I graduated in 86 , and there was, the economy, kind of, crashed back then. So it was, the economy really sucked so. I knew I needed to find a job, because my dad was getting sick of me living at their house. And he said, "if you don't have a job in like two months," he put a date on it, you know, "I'm going to get you a job at," you know, where he worked at. And I'm going, "No!" And so-- - [Interviewer] What did he do? - [Interviewee] He managed the maintenance department for the school district. - [Interviewer] Okay. - [Interviewee] So, yeah. So during the summer, going through art school, he would get me security jobs where I just drove a car from school to school, just screwing around and then of course-- - [Interviewer] Top level security. - [Interviewee] Yeah. - [Interviewer] You were top level security. - [Interviewee] I started doing, I memorized doing donuts at this middle school, just because I got bored and I got the car stuck. I had to get out and push it. Yeah, that was fun I forgot all about that actually. Oh yeah, so it took me eight months to find a job. And I had a friend who went to art school with me and he moved back to Montana, but he wanted to plug back in at Seattle. So every Sunday he would call me and I would read the classified ads to him, for any design stuff was on there. And so I was doing that one night and I saw this one job and, I'm not reading that one to him. I'm going to need to do that myself. (laughter) And so I apply. It's for this sportswear company in Seattle. So I got a job there. And their art department has-- - [Interviewer] So not only did you not read it, you also got the job? - [Interviewee] Yeah, I got the job. And it was a great, it was a fun job. There was like about 20 people in our art department as. No, I was the 20th person in the art department. And then from that point forward, I got all my friends hired. Anytime there is an opening, I'd say, "I know somebody who looked for a job," and they would interview him, they'd hire him, and so all my friends ended up working there. And we had all gone to art school together. So it's a little unique in that sense. I remember one time though. When I went in to do my interview, one of my friends had seen the same classified. So we're in the office, the art director is looking through my portfolio and she goes, "well, you got the job." We shake hands. "Let me show you around." So we get out, we walk out. We're walking through the lobby area, and I look to my right and my friend Mark is sitting on the chair waiting for his interview. (laughter) And he looks at me like, "what are you doing here"" And I go, "hey Mark!" He kind of waves at me and I just say, "good luck." (laughter)