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DAVE STEPHENS
After graduating with honors from Miami Dade Community College in 1972 in Graphic Arts, I spent several years learning the nitty-gritty of the real world in jobs with ad agencies and design studios before starting my freelance design business.

In 1984, I moved to Los Angeles, where I was a Senior Art Director with Bernard Hodes, a recruitment ad agency. After a year of heavy deadlines and valley smog, I escaped to Northern California where I freelanced for Austin Knight Inc., another recruitment ad agency. I also did design work for the prestigious Colonna & Farrel firm in St. Helena, which specialized in wine label design.

I was offered an in-house office at Campbell & Associates in Santa Rosa, and served as the firm’s Senior Art Director. Our group won several of the most highly sought-after accounts in the area. One of these was the Sonoma County Fair, for which work we won multiple Gold Sadie Awards in creative competitions held by the Sonoma County Art Directors Club.

Independently of Campbell & Associates, I did design work for EMG Guitar Pickups, the premier manufacturer of high tech guitar electronics in the industry. Some of my work for EMG was featured in Print Magazine, a top graphic design trade journal.

I also began a 15+ year association with Shrapnel Records, a small record company specializing in virtuoso electric guitar players. I have designed hundreds of album covers for the Shrapnel label as well as for the company's Blues Bureau and Tone Center labels. We have published the first version of Shrapnel Records' e-commerce site in 1995, replacing it several years later with a Filemaker-driven site.

In Santa Rosa, I also did work for a host of other local accounts with national recognition, including Spectrum Oils, Pedroncelli Wines, Deaf Dog Coffee, and Murphy Goode Winery.

At home, I am slave to my Siamese cat Lita, who has trained me to lift her up to where her food is kept out of reach of the dogs. If she loses track of me in the house I hear about it and have to report my whereabouts or I get yelled at in cat language. Lita occasionally consents to share me with my other cat Layla, who is painfully shy and usually hides from Suzanne’s dogs in the bedroom. Both are extremely annoyed that Suzanne’s two Shelties, who have discovered that I am an easy mark for dog cookies, now follow me around the house barking for treats.

I also am crazy insane about playing blues guitar. I taught myself by playing along with my favorite artists’ CDs at home, but I was scared to death to play in front of people. But that all changed when Suz pushed me out on stage at a local blues jam one night. Somehow I survived the adrenalin rush, got a standing ovation, and became a confirmed audience addict. Since then, I have played as a member of a blues jam host band two or three nights a week. I also collect old Gibson Marauders and own and play several other guitars. I can waste hours on Ebay dreaming about paying $200 for a old $10,000 guitar someone found in the attic.

My favorite form of meditation is exploring our local orchard roads on my recumbent bike (a Lightening Stealth), which I do almost everyday, weather permitting. Suzanne and I are vegetarians and I am interested in alternative health approaches and spiritual studies. My life’s ambition is to test-drive a UFO, but I still haven’t had any luck convincing one to land in our back yard.

I was heavily absorbed in jewelry-making for several years, doing my own casting, stone-cutting and silver and gold fabrication. My work was featured in a book on silversmithing, in “Yahoo! Internet Life magazine” and in “Lapidary Journal.” I've had to cut back on jewelry-making since I began devoting so much time to playing in blues jams.

I realize I need a hobby, but who has the time?


SUZANNE STEPHENS
I have been inspired to pursue lots of different interests since at least age four, when I told my parents, “I want to be a nurse lady in the daytime, an artist lady at night, and a golf lady on the weekends.”

Within a few years, I would have added stunt water skier, ballerina, pianist and Olympic swimmer to my list of career goals. By the fifth grade, I was constantly in trouble for "wasting" notebook paper, so my parents focused my artistic energy by enrolling me in private art lessons, my favorite activity through high school graduation.

I studied art history and fine arts at Hollins College, Roanoke, VA, then studied fashion design at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City, where I graduated with highest honors. A few years of work in the fashion design field showed me that my true interest was in drawing, not sewing, so I enrolled in a Charlotte, NC community college, where I studied graphic design and fashion illustration.

Soon I began paying my dues with several years as a fashion illustrator and graphic designer for two Southeastern department store chains and a newspaper. My freelance work on the side eventually expanded into a graphic design studio. At the same time, I developed a passion for whitewater canoeing and kayaking that consumed every spare minute for nearly fifteen years. Certified as a canoe and kayak instructor by the American Red Cross and the American Canoe Association, I taught for our local whitewater club and the American Red Cross.

My studio quickly expanded into a full-service advertising agency, becoming known known as one of Charlotte’s hottest creative shops. My staff and I won dozens of awards in local, regional and national creative competitions. Our clients included retail stores, hotels, a hardware/software developer and several hospitals. Later we specialized in healthcare marketing, providing marketing, media and creative strategic planning, media buying and creative services for an HMO and for eight Southeastern hospitals.

When ad agency burn-out took its toll, I headed for the North Carolina mountains to become Publications Manager and a parttime kayak instructor and raft guide for Nantahala Outdoor Center, a highly esteemed whitewater school and mecca for whitewater boaters. When the real world called again, I moved to San Francisco, where I freelanced to ad agencies and a book publisher and taught canoeing for the UCSF outdoor program.

Since Dave and I moved to Oregon in 1994, I have specialized in Web site design and coding while Dave does both Web graphics and print design. Our Web design clients have included Geocities.com, third largest ISP in the U. S. before its purchase by Yahoo!; Silicon Valley multimedia developer Docuventure, Inc.; Bingo.com, the Vertexgroup, RealTSolutions, Aftermath Media, Homeseekers.com, CoinScape and the SchoolHouse Retreat. I also enjoy mentoring other Web designers.

Never content to do just one thing, I have also been studying percussion, learning djembe, congas and drumset. My current focus is on learning Afro/Cuban conga drumming styles, which I love to play with funk music.

I also devote time to caring for our menagerie of pets and to long walks with my adopted Sheltie Sage, who has one crippled leg. Sage attracts lots of attention since he received a dog wheelchair for Christmas. Our afternoon walks, which have turned into afternoon runs, are frequently interrupted by people asking about Sage and his wheels.

I get back on the river for some whitewater boating now and then, but have largely handed over those pleasures to my son Craig, who inherited my love of kayaking. He is lead instructor for Endless River Adventures, one of my clients, and teaches kayaking in North Carolina during the summer and leads kayaking trips to Ecuador, Costa Rica and Mexico during the winter.

My current dream is of combining a trip to Costa Rica to visit Craig with a trip to Cuba to study drumming with the masters. I hope the Orichas — the African nature spirits to whom many Cuban songs are dedicated — hear my prayers!

 

   

 

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