Life changing moments are elusive—those touch points where you can see your path shifting right before you in slow motion. It's a thrilling and powerful experience being able to control and affect that kind of change in yourself. I have several that come directly to mind, like the day my car turned itself around and decided that my girlfriend may indeed become my wife someday; the day I found out we were having a little boy; and the weekend in 2002 when I built a screen printing studio in my mom’s basement.

More than ten years later it is weird to think back and see how a print studio could have changed my life, but the evidence is there. It’s in the early work that landed me a steady design job. It’s in the friendships that were forged at countless shows, art events and on the big ol’ internet. Yep, my print shop pretty much made it possible to move in with my girlfriend, get engaged, married, have a family, and now move on to a new phase in life. Teaching.

I began screen printing because it was the medium that gave me the maximum amount of creative freedom for the minimum expense. I was lured in by the meticulous but forgiving nature of the process. It took some years to figure out that it was a more complex medium than I first thought.

What I learned was that screen printing is a completely authentic experience, one that is never exactly the way you envision, that is actually improved by the doing. I fell in love with those lush color overlays and the building of texture that comes along with layer over layer of ink. Happy accidents and beguiling mistakes play together over and over in my mind. I see these prints and in them I can see the love and attention and that produced them.

These prints represent what I love in the world, and in them I can see the things that inspire me always to do more, to do better. The evidence is always there. The proof. At the end of the day, I’ve made a beautiful thing, with my two hands.