Illustrations for a Red Cross Annual Report 1993

When I lived in San Francisco, I was a Red Cross volunteer. I worked under a fellow named Andrew Rose in the public affairs department. As head of public affairs, one of his responsibilities was producing the annual report for The American Red Cross, Bay Area. I guess I had mentioned to him that I was trying to be a real artist and so he asked me to put together some sort of a visual theme for the project. I had just moved there and had nothing, but I got ahold of some chipboard and spray paint and did about fifty variations from these hand and cross stencils I'd cut, working out on the fifth floor fire escape of my building on Bush St. Andrew said he couldn't use the cross images (for legal reasons) but liked some of the hands and used them to illustrate the piece. I have to admit that this application of my work is not ideal but I am, nevertheless, proud to have been a part of any Red Cross project.

Guardian of the Cross 2005

I always loved this illustration but it never did get used for anything.
I don't have the original vector file for it anymore either, which is a shame.
All that's left of it is this jpg of my imagined superheroine,
The Defender of Mercy.

L.E.A.F. Logos 2009

A couple years ago, Julie Malone and I thought it would be a great idea to start an emergency fund for local artists in St. louis like ourselves. You know, if someone- a local St. Louis artist, say, without medical insurance (pretty much every artist I know), found themselves in a financial spot with medical bills, then L.E.A.F. could maybe help out. Difficult predicaments, large and small, could maybe be made a bit less desperate with the presence of a Local Emergency Artist's Fund (the acronym did still need work).

Well, like so many noble ambitions, this one fell beside the way. I recently asked Julie if she'd be interested in resurrecting the notion and she said no. Thinking about it now, I have to admit I'm not interested anymore either. A project like this could only become another insurance-plan-type-thing and I wouldn't, frankly, care to be the guy who decides who gets relief and who doesn't. And how are we filling the kitty? Fund raisers? There's much to consider and, honestly, I just wanna be the starving artist who gets the boost.

Anyhow, once we came up with this idea, my first assignment was to produce some logo concepts, give the project an identity. These are those.