Hello, my name is greg westby and art is my life. I started drawing in sketchbooks in 3rd grade. I remember that was the first year I had ever failed a test and then, probably consequentially, also received my first report card grade lower than a B in a class. I guess I stopped paying attention so much and did some drawing when I should have been paying attention. Back then I was doing mostly two-dimensional rudimentary drawings of landscapes with hills and army men shooting and most times killing each other, the bullets being represented by dotted lines coming from boxy, irregular-shaped pistols, M-16’s and tank cannons. My favorite drawings involved two opposing tall, fat non-seaworthy battleships topped with countless marines with small rectangular automatic weapons and mounted cannons and sniper rifles with night vision scopes shooting dotted lines at each other. To the average observer, it might just seem like a whole bunch of scribbles and doodles, but to me it was action! Explosions were going off left and right (but not front and back), gunshots, death. Sometimes I’d get so into it I wouldn’t hear someone who was asking for my attention. I got the usual sympathetic, “o, that’s wonderful, dear,” from mom and dad with faux excitement, but it gave me a little thrill to throw it on the fridge like my mom was proud of it. In 6th grade, I got my first bit of real genuine awe and truly impressed some people. One night, I just sat down at my desk and decided to draw a self-portrait. I worked for a good couple of hours straight and produced quite an accurate rendering. Even I was impressed. Everybody loved it and was so amazed by it. That was the end of it, I was hooked. I admit it was the attention I wanted at first. Hell, I still love the attention. Who wouldn’t? It’s in our blood as humans to love it. Now I was more determined, after seeing what it could do for me. Around that same time and probably earlier too, a friend of mine who attended Ross Corners Christian Academy with me introduced me to stop-action filming, among some other creative little video tricks. After inheriting a camcorder from my grandpa I expanded on our ideas and began making films on my own. Ad-libbed plots played out on original, custom-made Lego complexes and vehicles were long, drawn-out and choppy due to the 1 second minimal exposure time which was a good couple of frames but it’s all good, they were great all the same. In middle school, art classes were undoubtedly my favorite. At the end of middle school, I took a music course which was essentially intro to guitar. Lucky for me, my brother had recently purchased a starter guitar for $60 or so and I practiced on it often and the licks I learned off the few other, more experienced guitarists in the class and made my own songs. Once again I was hooked on the attention my little private concerts provided me with. But this time there was something else. The idea of making my own music that I enjoyed gave me chills down my spine when I played it. I suddenly became aware of the instrument’s ability to express feeling through sounds but no words. I was given my own guitar for Christmas and took lessons and for some time was very good. I floated in and out of several bands throughout high school, mostly with the same two best friends, Adam Skellett and Chris Kuklis (both great musicians who deserve much more praise than I can give them). I lost my motivation with the denial of transfer to my teacher’s teacher due to a little scheduling problem because I also had lacrosse at the same time. I still play my guitar every once in a while, but time is rare and far stretched in my busy college times, so I can only play when I can afford the time. In high-school I took all the art classes that were available with the exception of one course designed for the very inexperienced of future artists. I made a few pieces which I might still consider worthy of mention such as a few wood sculptures, an extremely time-consuming stippled still-life, and some pottery. Now, I am in my sixth semester at Broome Community College in upstate New York. My first couple of semesters were a bit of a flop even in my art classes, which were the only ones I really enjoyed at the time. I didn’t really put an exceptional effort into my artwork, let alone my academic classes. Still, I produced one or two portfolio pieces. My third semester, I was forced to choose a major because I was basically done with my art core credits under liberal arts. I went for graphic design, even though I was very apprehensive about using computers to create art. When I finally saw what it was, I became interested and I took the advanced class the following semester, despite being short one prerequisite course. Finally I was learning something new and I enjoyed it a great deal. I even began to enjoy learning new things in my academic classes. I soon learned that the papers and other such writing assignments which I used to hate were much easier and much more fun to write if I had an opinion on the subject, like many of those dealt with in sociology and philosophy. Now I love going to all my classes. I’ve come to realize and appreciate the art in everything. I cannot open my eyes somewhere that there is not art or inspiration for art. I love to read books and analyze their meanings, which I could never even take the time to finish an entire book before. I should be receiving my associate’s degree in graphic design this may, which is coming up quite soon here. I also have, along the way, gained a great respect and love for photography. Although I wish I had the time and money for it, I don’t do much film photography. Most of mine is digital, although I do have a few decent prints from my intro to photo class at BCC. You can see a decent size chunk of my best digital pics on this site. Today, I love to create art of any kind. I create mostly graphic design, photography and music right now. I have been messing with a computer sampling program called Fruity Loops for a year or so now and I have created about one hundred and sixty songs and fragments of songs. I have my own self-released albums, on which I go by the pen name Griegor Von Vestpe’, which you can view and hear on my website. I also recently acquired a sitar directly from India, made by one of the best sitar companies in the world which has contributed to my music and shall in the future. I am also involved with a few other music projects. I am the photographer (digital) for a local band called ReVeL (www.reveltheband.com) who plays “melodic hard rock” and I also do whatever graphic design I can help with. So far I have taken a little under a thousand pictures of the band during live concerts and for separate photo shoots and designed the cover for their first album “Embryonic” in collaboration with the lead singer and guitarist, Jake Marion. I also have some graphic design contributions to the website and I also designed their logo. More recently, I discovered that a guy I went to high school with, who goes by the name of M.DOTS, was rapping and after having heard some of his songs, was very impressed. Soon after that, I heard he was looking for beats. I love rap too and decided I wanted to be part of it so I showed him some beats I had made to be meant for rap and one of my first attempts turned out very successful and is on his new demo CD, whose cover I also designed and in this case, printed and assembled myself. Together with two other talented beat-makers we form INI Music, better known and DOUBLE-I. We’re building a network of artists and may someday establish DOUBLE-I music an official record label. I designed the logos for M.DOTS and DOUBLE-I. This summer, I hope to learn some web design and my web site will then become under my control. I will learn or teach myself Flash and hopefully some Lightwave and Adobe After Effects as well. From there, I may expand on web design as well, since it involves a lot of graphic design and is, of course, a high-paying profession and if the economy ever bounces back, it’ll take over the advertising industry. Next semester, I will unfortunately still be at BCC, but only so I can prepare my portfolio for enrolling for Spring 2004, hopefully at SVA, Parsons, Pratt, or basically any other top-o-the-line college who can offer me graphics and cinematography. I plan to get my bachelor’s degree in graphics and then move on to cinematography and filming and eventually work my way up to director. My ultimate goal would be a movie which was entirely created and produced from my artistic material. The story, the music, the filming, everything I can possibly contribute to a movie production. If you wish to tell your life story or express your views on art or the world or anything else, please write me at griegor@incarnationstudios.com.
Click here for the short version
© copyright greg westby 2004
