My hometown is Harlingen, TX. I say this is my town because I have been living here since ’95 and its the longest I’ve been in one place. I love the atmosphere but could do with some cooler weather conditions. Thankfully I have both my parents, as well as two sisters; one is an elementary teacher and the other is attending TAMU. I got married on the luckiest of dates July 7, 2007 or 7/7/07 and I’ve been the happiest ever since. In October 2008 my daughter was born. I’ve been lucky enough to spend so much time with her and I’ve seen her grow in ways that are just amazing.
Education
I graduated from the University of Texas-Pan American in the Fall of 2007 with a Bachelors degree in Fine Arts. What does that mean? I took a lot of art classes. My main area of study was graphic design, and with time I’m hoping to show what I’ve learned through this site.
Work
Well I’ve done a lot of it. I’ve worked all kinds of jobs from store construction (manual labor) to graphic designing. My first job was as a sales associate working for Sears, every high school student needs money. After that experience I moved through several jobs, I was an assistant art instructor at Rio Grand Valley Arts Studio (RGVAS)for about a yr. I was involved in the setup of Steve & Barry’s in Harlingen (temporary). During that time I started working for the company that gave me the most experience: MPC Studios Inc. – I began as a weekend news editor (capturing local news stories and uploading them directly to news website). After graduating I became a full-time video editor working all kinds of hours. After gaining some more experience, I was given the responsibility of designing projects for some of the various clients the company had. Before MPC and I parted ways I had the opportunity to act as video editor, designer, and photographer.
Currently
Quite a bit of time has passed since then. I was fortunate enough to find a great position back at RGVAS, this time as the main art instructor. I began teaching the classes at the beginning of February ’10 and have enjoyed every day. I get to work with some really talented and creative youngsters. The flexibility of this position has given me the opportunity to spend invaluable quality time with my daughter. I’ve also had time to explore my own artistic abilities using various forms of media. Within the past year I’ve worked with some family members and friends to create personalized birthday and graduation invitations, as well as some interesting photo collages. I look forward to doing more projects like this because they are a fun way for me to work with new material.
More recently I have taken up a passion for acrylic painting. Starting in the summer of 2010, I picked up my old brushes and dug out some really old tubes of acrylic and started to mess around with some ideas. It has been a lot of fun and is a nice break from doing all the computer work I had been locked into. I’ve been experimenting with new techniques (new to me) and working in a variety of sizes. I hope that my passion for art will rub off on the students and give them inspiration to go out create some beautiful pieces.