My name is Johnny, I am originally from North Carolina. After dropping out of high school at 16 years old, I  spent many years traveling the U.S., mostly hitchhiking until I got my license and first car at 19. I have been to every state south of West Virginia and west of Illinois. During these years, I would sporadically find work on small farms where

I would get a break from the road. I also really loved volunteering at music festivals in Oregon and in Northern California. My favorite festival was Earthdance before it got moved from the hog farm in Laytonville to the fairgrounds in Vallejo, Ca. Over time, I  grew really tired of traveling and not having a place to call home, and decided to settle down in Eugene and get back into school. I chose Eugene because I really like the community and have a few close friends here that I met while on the road.

This is my first year officially in the Media Arts program. I started school last year in pursuit of a degree in Journalism, took a couple of photography/photojournalism classes, and fell in love with my camera. I am still currently a Journalism major, but am double-majoring in Media Arts because Photography really fits into both. I am also interested in furthering the web design skills I developed in high school, and learning the basics of graphic design. I intend to one day start my own online business, although I do not yet know what that business will be, but I will need web/graphic design skills in any case.

When I’m not at school, I work seasonally at Oregon Aquatics, a wholesale aquatic plant, fish, and pond supply distributor. I have been working there for 2 years now and really love the job. One of my jobs there is to take photographs of all the plants that we have and making ‘Signage’ for those plants (Signs with photos and details of every plant) and also uploading those photos, and photos of happenings around the nursery, to our Facebook. It’s great, because I get paid to practice my photography.

While taking photos and learning about all of the plants I have really gotten into water-gardening. I have a 30 gallon planted aquarium and a 55 gallon pre-formed pond basin at home full of plants, koi, and goldfish. Even though keeping up with maintenance on both is a lot of work, I have found it to be an extremely calm and relaxing hobby.