In the fall of 1994, I was hired to do a portrait of Paul Brainerd. He was the CEO of Aldus Corporation that produced PageMaker software. He lived in a posh downtown condo and the magazine was doing a piece about his hipster pad. So, I arranged to do his portrait somewhere in his living space. When I first stepped into his foyer, I was immediately blown away by the art on his walls. It was one of the most spectacular collections of photography I had ever seen. And not just history’s greatest hits, but beautiful works by artists I had never heard of. We chatted about this collection a bit. He said he liked to support northwest photographers and I knew I had to share my work with him. I invited him to my studio to show him the chromes from our photo session and share my work. I had pulled a selection of prints and carefully presented them one by one. He was quiet and seemed unimpressed. I’m bombing here, I thought. When I finished, he spoke. I encourage artists to put together their best work and I usually buy it all he said. I didn’t hear a word after that, other than I was to contact him when I had put together a selection. Rather than empty my flat files, I decided to do a portfolio, a sort of greatest hit of my career thus far. Works from my beginning in 1980 to1994. It took me nine months to complete the project, largely due to indecision on my part and constantly starting over. I made 2 copies of the portfolio, assembled in a lipped clamshell box, lined with Italian marbled paper. It was quite impressive. When I called Paul, he simply asked what took me so long? But he was pleased with the results and pulled out his check book. My invoices at that time were produced using PageMaker. Not exactly the appropriate software, since it had no ability to add numbers. That’s the most unusual use of the software I’ve seen he said and chuckled. Paul would become very supportive and one of my biggest collectors. There was even a show of his collection once in Seattle that featured one of my prints. All eclectic as Portfolio I is, it stands as a snippet of my early work and what would become major themes throughout my career.
