Back in the Game

Until recently, I can’t recall having had to actively seek employment in a very long time.  Unfortunately, the economy’s woes have finally reached my doorstep in a tsunamic rush.  The agency for whom I’ve directed the interactive division for the past year, decided that they didn’t need an office in Austin and had reached the conclusion to shut it down.  Long story short, the former VP and myself have since ignited our respective entrepreneurial fires and are formulating strategies to drum up business for ourselves, together.  We have put this endeavor under the moniker Spur (verb, noun, agency).  We currently have two working divisions, Spur Lab (the more agency like entity) and Spur Apps, a company exclusively dedicated to promoting apps.  I have a feeling that Spur Media is on the way too.  We have other video blogging aspirations that will tie directly in line with these other primarily digital endeavors.

SpurLab.com, Spurapps.com, Santoriinteractive.com, JosephSantori.com, GoldsmithandBogisch.com, an app demo for Hahn, Texas / Texas State University System and some 3d work for Reflectix Inc. have all been my actual work focus these past few weeks.  We got laid off near the beginning of October.  Jason Meeker and I have been holed up in an office graciously provided by Jeff Hahn of Hahn Texas PR firm.  Hahn threw us, each, contract to work on.  Even still, Jason and I have been really aggressively exploring our options as to what we can do while trying to keep our heads above water by bottom feeding for contract work.  As ugly and scary as that all sounds, I’ve somewhat enjoyed the process.  I’d like to get some steady income in really soon, but I really want to create a solid company or collection of companies of our own and succeed THAT way.

In the meantime, my music performance has taken somewhat a backseat for a minute.  I play piano and saz everyday throughout the day, but mainly when I am trying to get away from the computer for a minute, or just to blow off some stress.

These past few weeks have finally gotten me to the starting line, I feel.  I have been writing and rewriting my resume, and building and rebuilding my portfolio sites.  It has been agonizingly tedious.  I still need to finish the store on this site.  Buy my art.  Its supports my kid and will enable me to create more.

My art is somehow starting to move.  Fine Arts Direct out of LA has just drawn up a contract for the printing and reselling of some pieces for me.  This is great.  I hope to see some income from that really soon.  I haven’t painted since Ari was born.  Well, I take that back.  I did a collaborative live piece with Hans Haveron at Art Outside 2010.  That was great and the piece is still hanging in my house.  It’s primarily my piece with an assist by Mr. Haveron.  I feel confident, he’d agree.   He was working on another solo piece simultaneously so he gave me carte blanche with the piece.  So I ran with it.  I have a bunch of pieces still in LA and some of them are being requested to be reproduced.  I have a small laundry list of  pieces to archive for reproduction, so it will be nice to see the finished printed results.  Exciting, YES?