Welcome!

I'm Abe - and this is my personal website.

A little about me:

What am I passionate about?

  • Friends and Family
  • Exploring Inspiration
  • Organization
  • Learning
  • Teaching
  • Nature
  • Using My Imagination

What are my skills?

  • Singer Songwriter
  • Designer
  • Fine Artist
  • Culinary Arts
  • Web Development
  • Project Management

Some background on me:

My parents are folk artists, based in Southern Pennsylvania. My childhood was pretty standard... Spent a lot of time in the sandbox, playing in the dirt, catching frogs, exploring the creeks and pine groves around our 1800s farmhouse. Having a family that was always at home gave me plenty of raw material for acting like an adult at the age of 7.

Most of my Uncles play guitar, and there are few family functions where music isn't part of the mix. I started playing guitar during middle school, and haven't looked back since. Music is my way to transform negativity into beauty, and to talk about things that can't be put into words.

I've been painting and drawing since I was old enough to hold a brush. The freezing cold ice storms of Pennsylvania never really appealed to me, so as soon as my high school sentence was over, I headed to The Savannah College of Art and Design in Savannah, GA. SCAD had a profound impact on my personal direction as an artist, and as a person. The 16 credits in Art History, the comprehensive array of studio intensive skill building workshops, combined with truly inspiring teaching, pushed me to my absolute best as a designer and as a creative thinker. I placed in the top 3 at the SCAD senior show of 2002 with my illustration "Waste", and graduated with a BFA in Illustration.

After undergrad, I moved into the Scientific and Medical Journal Publishing world, working in Desktop Publishing for three years, and eventually taking a job at the National Center for Biotechnology Information.

My work at NCBI has covered a broad range of responsiblilities, from coding XML/XSLT, CSS, xHTML, PERL, and MathML, to designing workflows, writing web applications, and improving the design of our public facing website PubMed Central.

NCBI really catalyzed my ability to adapt, plan, and execute solutions. When it's all said and done, I like to look back at a project or application and enjoy the convenience I've made into a reality. In software development, there is nothing so rewarding as a system that runs with little or no intervention from its designer.

I really enjoy a collaborative work environment where I can use my problem solving skills and my creative side to communicate an idea. My favorite projects involve taking a problem from real life, conceptualizing it, brainstorming solutions, developing a gameplan, and executing that plan.

This all started with Topps baseball cards when I was a kid. I'd sit for hours and just sort baseball cards into different categories (by batting average, by team, all stars, etc.). Then I moved on to playing Oregon Trail on the original Macintosh computers. In middle school under Steve Griggs, I learned to write in the BASIC programming language. Now I sit for hours and channel data using all sorts of hardware and software gadgetry - who would have guessed?

My Google+ Profile is linked here.

But enough about how I got here, why not take a look at the art and music!?

...or if you're interested in more technical information, you may want to check out my resume.

...or if you're trying to figure out what makes me tick keep reading!

Who are my influences?

Ed Barbier shaped the way I view design, a fantastic sculptor, Louisiana native, and just a profoundly inspiring teacher.

Dick Krepel brought me into a new realm of understanding the usage of multimedia for illustration.

Alexi Natchev introduced me to fine art of conveying a story through illustrations.

Kirt Witte was instrumental in exposing me to some Photoshop techniques that I still use today.

(More historic artistic references include: Van Gogh, Kandinski, Salvador Dali)

Steve Krug has been a big influence on the way I see interaction design.

Michael Kay and the kind folks at Mulberry Technologies made a profound impact on the way I work with XML.

Larry Wall, the inventor of PERL definitely deserves mention for giving us the ability to make easy things easy and hard things possible.

The Development Group and PubMed Central Teams at NCBI have been instrumental in my development as a programmer and project manager.

 

Musicwise, here are some of my favorites:

James Taylor has had a huge impact on me as a musician.

Trey Anastasio has influenced me on guitar playing and the use of improv.

The John Butler Trio never ceases to inspire me to write and play better.

 

Favorite Movies:

Back to the Future II

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Inception

 

Favorites to come include places on earth, products, companies, and causes.

Thanks for visiting! I hope to see you again soon.

Abe