VisualsSpeak roots

I had two amazing art teachers in high school. Marjorie Keary, who believed I could be an artist long before I thought I could, and Robert Enos. Mr Enos told me that if I wanted to be an artist, I should start saving pictures as references. Probably a simple suggestion made in passing, but one that would set in motion a passion for the inspirational power of visual images that spawned a business twenty five years later. I started cutting photos out of magazines back then and have never stopped.

When I went off to art school at the Rhode Island School of Design, I jumped at the chance to work in the clipping collection of the library for my work-study assignment. I worked part time during the school year and full time in the summer, filing endless piles of magazine clippings into category folders. I watched hundreds of incredibly talented students, faculty, and alumni come in with their assignments and ask for folders of pictures to help solve a wide variety of design challenges.

My boss, Matthew Amaimo, patiently taught me to catalogue images by how people thought about them and searched for them. He then decided we would begin to laminate the collection. Hundred of thousands of pictures. I remember it taking a couple of years, or maybe it just seemed that way?

My personal collection grew. I kept cutting up magazines, and filing them into folders. I moved all over the country, and hauled that collection everywhere I went. Everytime I would feel stuck, or needed some kind of inspiration, I would flip through those pictures. What started as a box, became a four drawer file cabinet full of tens of thousands of pictures. My all-time favorite magazine which I have subscribed to and cut up since I was sixteen is National Wildlife.