Carol Lee
March 16, 2008

Working with wildlife over the years has given me the privilege of meeting scores of amazing, creative, interesting and talented individuals.

Rachel Lewis, a senior at Texas Tech, is one of those individuals. A Production Artist at The Price Group in Lubbock, Rachel recently designed a new brochure for the Wildlife Center. After an initial meeting, Rachel created a colorful, eye-catching and informative design.

Rachel said her passions are "conceptual development and typography." She grew up in New Mexico and Texas, and followed a long-standing family tradition to attend Texas Tech. She said, "After changing majors a couple of times, I finally found my passion: Graphic Design. I attribute my love of art to my grandmother, Dee O'Donnell. Since I was a child, I would visit grandma's house and we'd spend hours on the back porch painting ceramics. These are my favorite memories and serve as my artistic inspiration."

Since she's been in Lubbock, Rachel's been a full time student with part time employment. She started her design internship with The Price Group in May, 2007. Since December, she's their full time production artist. She's finishing her last two classes and graduates in May this year with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Communication design.

Our second meeting was at their downtown office where we also met Mike Meister, Vice President and Executive Art Director at Price. It was suggested we stop by the conference room to see Mike's paintings, and what I saw there were three framed, limited edition bird prints. It was one of those "Wow" moments - all three were breathtakingly beautiful in vivid colors and in lifelike detail. I was intrigued, and wanted to know more about this very talented, but modest, man.

He said he liked drawing birds in grade school, and ultimately decided to paint something on a large four-by-six foot scale of a small, colorful bird. He first painted a Great Titmouse, followed by an American Goldfinch, Painted Bunting, Green Jay, Eastern Bluebird, Baltimore Oriole, Lilac Breasted Roller and a male cardinal, the last in the series.

Working in acrylic, Mike starts with a black canvas and builds up layers from dark to light, giving him the color values he wants. "I work on a black canvas because I prefer the depth it gives to the image."

He uses "a combination of found and my own photography: I create a composite image on my computer, usually pulling together several birds and background elements, print that file and then use it as a visual reference. It would be difficult for me to go on location to shoot some of these birds, as my painting of the Roller is an African species."

He said, "My next painting is of an Amazon frog. I chose it because I've always loved how much personality those little critters seem to have--and how colorful they are--but also because I believe their plight as a species represents ours in the long term."

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The originals are large, not framed, but are on gallery-depth canvases so are ready to hang. Prints are available on paper or canvas (although not yet through his website. Contact Mike at mike@designsbymeister.com). If anyone is interested in a print, they can email Mike and he'll send them a price list, or call him at 763-5033. "I plan to show some of my work in May's First Friday Art Tour at the Downtown Underground Gallery. Here's a website for general information, although his work may not be listed until next month," Mike added.
http://www.ffat.org/index.php?page=2

Rachel thanks us for the privilege of working with us, but it's us who are thanking her and Mike for donating their time, work and talent to develop our beautiful new brochures.
Mr. Don Parks has been printing our quarterly newsletter for the past several years, and Don has graciously offered to donate five thousand copies of the new brochures.

There's also a talented Wildlife Center volunteer in our midst: Tate Marshall. Originally from East Texas, Tate moved here from Austin. He admits he attended college sporadically, but never took it seriously until he decided to get a BA in painting from Texas Tech.

Tate is a self-taught artist, but was drawing since he was a preschooler. Several years ago, a friend asked him to draw her parents as a gift to them for their anniversary. They were thrilled with the results, and Tate says that sent him on a completely different path.

Every job he ever had was completely unrelated to the art field, and he thinks maybe he never took it seriously. Ultimately he decided to focus more on commissioned artwork, cut his work hours, and forced himself to spend more time drawing.

Hurricane Rita really tore his hometown of Orange, Texas to shreds in 2005, and he left Austin to go home to help his parents and relatives clean up the mess. It was then that Tate decided to pursue art fulltime. He decided he'd spent enough time "just getting by," and he knew it was time he started doing what he really wanted to do with his life. "It took a natural disaster to help me realize that I don't have forever, and if I had goals I wanted to come to fruition I'd better start as soon as possible." He moved to Lubbock a few months later, and has about one year of school left.

Tate did several commissioned pieces, and two appear on our web site, along with Mike's brilliant bird renderings, and the brochure Rachel created for the Wildlife Center. He said, "The commissioned work I've done thus far has been portraits, but I'm open to anything. I'm all over the place stylistically, and don't have a favorite genre as yet."

With their permission, all the work can be viewed on our web site at spwrc.org and Tate can be reached at tate.marshall@gmail.com

We all know there's lots of local artistic talent and hopefully in the future, my column will profile renowned artist Jim Eppler of Lubbock, sculptor Randy Hamilton of Shallowater, and perhaps others. Stay tuned.

Carol Lee is the Executive Director of the South Plains Wildlife Rehabilitation Center, Inc. She may be reached at spwrc@suddenlink.net