Made in a defunct Virginia Factory on Ripped Invoices to fit small Drawing Surface, in-between assembling doors on the line. Artistic, Soulful, Historic, Momentos from a leading Building Supply Company. 

Hundreds of these works are poignant expressions of an artist's determination to salvage an art dream while working in a factory. Without a studio, employee #711 - me, mounted a drawing board next to my work station on the factory floor. After a change in management in the door plant, my original, large drawing board was destroyed. Weeks later, after the dust settled, I mounted a smaller, more discrete drawing board, ripping my paper in half to adapt to the smaller surface. Most of these works were done on the backs of work orders, making for a collectible art momento of the recently demolished Kempsville Building Materials on Witchduck Rd., one of the premiere building companies in Hampton Roads. They address the resourcefulness of an artist trying to salvage an art dream in the not so encouraging atmosphere of a noisy, dusty factory. Using company coffee as a blending medium,  subtle cool tones emrged from the black ink. This "Build a Dream" Series pays homage to KBM, and an artist's pursuit of a dream while working there. Drawing these "architectural riffs" gave me a sense of home during tough periods (including a period of my own homelessness while working at KBM). The fact that a homeless center is being built on this very property where I drew them, gives the drawings a special meaning and connection to the land, the center, and the locals. Special thanks to KBM for being accepting of this quest that emerged on their factory floor in the late 1980's, especially Mgr. Wayne Hagerman. 

UPDATE on this series:

I was Employee #711 at kempsville Building Materials in the late 1980's, and early 1990's. I'm preparing a large exhibition to put these drawings and the other stages of my art journey in context. A  video installation played this story at the Huntington Museum in West Virginia. Exhibitions of actual drawings will be next. I met with the Virginia Beach Cultural Affairs, tugging my 4' x 2' model exhibition upstairs to the Conference Room, with portfolio, copies of testimonials, reviews, photos, original art, and one framed work. I brought a thumb drive, but they didn't bring the  device to play it. I relating how these works were created at the old KBM factory where the new Virginia Beach Housing Resource Center is being developed to help the homeless, proposing these works with their efforts to pursue a dream in the factory, as inspiration to those enduring homelessness, something I himself had endured for a period while working at KBM. My proposal was met with perplexity in understanding the blatant relevance of these works to the center, and received the response that there was no place for them. I asked if the building would have walls, and if so, what was going up there. Response: "No one would see these drawings except those in the clinics." Then was told, that other's expressed interest in that space, but hadn't submitted a proposal. Displaying art in the gallery space in the Ferguson Performing Arts Center - the closest gallery to the old KBM mill, was another possibility, but the response was lukewarm, at best, and there has been no follow-up in months in 6 months. Additionally, I was told my story is nothing fresh. I expressed interest in raising money through an auction of some of my drawings created at KBM to help support this center, but that too was dismissed. I had my work burned, tossed to a dumpster, my drawing board destroyed with hammers, me, assaulted by a gang and left on a concrete parking lot, black and blue, but, it's always the so-called "powers that be" that can cause the most harm, and not just from their lack of vision, but from sinister motives, like suppressing particular artist's positive contribution to culture.