Below is a little summary of who I am in a less formal format. My resume may tell you you what I can do and what institutions affirm that I can do it, but this portion of the site is devoted to who I am as a person, and how I came to do what I do, and why I continue to do it.

As with other text-intensive portions of the site, I've provided some navigational links to the left to help you jump to whole portions of information quickly. Each header also contains a "Jump to Top" link, in the form of a upward arrow, which enables you to move back to the top of the page, and thus the navigational menu to your left, so that you may then jump to other portions of the page.

My name is Brian Weseman, and I'm a Graphic Arts major. I'm twenty-nine years old, a full time student who began college seeking a direction as a Liberal arts Major.

I also work part-time, both at a paid job, and, more recently in between all that, I've been doing jack-of-all-trades type work in restoring an 1870's farm house in which I now live. If there's any time left over after that, I have a bit of a hobby doing artwork and design for my own enjoyment.

I am intrigued by this, how you say, "spare time"...

I've always been a strong student, and, much thanks to my father a mechanical engineer and a jack of all trades in his spare time, I've developed a very strong work ethic and sense of honesty. Working along side him has given me some real focus in my life, and I'm grateful for it.

My mother, meanwhile was a machinist professionally in earlier years working in factories that manufactured aircraft parts, but also a strong artist in her spare time.

My brother, my only sibling, currently works as a phone technician for SBC Global, but seeks a degree in industrial design in the meanwhile.

As you can see, I come from a busy family, many of whom are artistic in one way or another. Call it heredity, call it environment, but it seems to have influenced me in my life and work.

I live in a very small town in a rural corner of Connecticut. I like it that way, it's quiet, serene, and I can make as much or as little noise as I want to in general without every neighbor and his brother cussing me out for doing so. This is important when you're somewhat particular about your working environment.

As I mentioned earlier, I currently live in an 1870's farm house, a building that, until now, hadn't been renovated or really repaired since the 1950's. With the assistance of my father, and with what trade knowledge I've taken from him, we're bringing the building into a more livable state.

That includes demolishing and rebuilding each room of the house one by one, rewiring, updating the plumbing to include a heating system upstairs, and moving the interior walls of the house to enlarge some rooms, while creating others, such as an upstairs bathroom.

It really is a big job, but, it has it's rewards. I am, in effect, creating my own space. Speaking of spaces, moving into this house has actually afforded me enough space to create a studio independent of any other room in the house. I've furnished that studio with a variety of art suppiles, a design table, and so forth. I've also built a PC to my own specifications with which I accomplish the digital end of most of my work, both for class and for my own enjoyment.

It's quaint, yes. Simple and humble as well, but I wouldn't have it any other way.

I was born in 1977, grew up in a house that my father had built from scratch all on his own. That house was on a quiet and clean little lake- our "400-acre pool" as my father calls it.

I went to school at the town's elementary school, but was determined to be a special education student- due to my above-average performance in many select areas of academics. As the public school enviroment could no longer meet my needs, I finished out my grammar school time, and later high school time, in a private school that was equipped for special education, and that had begun, in fact, as a computer learning center.

It was there that I was introduced to my first computer. The school at that time had only the crude Apple IIe's that it had from its earlier tenure as a computer learning school and a few IBM X086's. Still, I became fascinated by what these machines could make possible, and, armed with an artistic curiousity I'd always had in childhood, I took to learning and using them quite naturally.

I later became familiar with Windows 3.x machines both in my class and in my home as both my school and my family decided to upgrade their equipment.

I graduated that private school in 1995, and began attending a nearby community college. I had little idea of where I wanted to go in life, as few eighteen-year-olds do, so I began as a Liberal Arts Major. Id always had a strong love of learning for learning's sake, and was fortunate enough that my family understood my preferences and need to get my feet wet.

As I neared graduation and a potential planned transfer to a four-year school, I began to take a few design related classes, and I fell in love with the idea. It was, after alll, the sort of things I'd been doing all along in my spare time, and it seemed sensible that I should enjoy my chosen career.

When I transferred to Eastern, a state college that had a pretty decent design program (and, of course, a price tag that fit my budget), I found out precisely what it would take to get me to a four-year degree in Graphic Design. Having pretty much all of my General Education Requirements out of the way from my previous Liberal Arts education, I set about taking courses towards my degree.

And that pretty much brings us up to date.

I've always done design projects from the time I was a kid, I just hadn't known it at the time. I drew, sure, like all little kids, but I wanted to do more than just draw a pretty picture and present it alone. I didn't just want to write some clever prose. I wanted to put that picture along side that prose, make the image function. And that's how I come to the more personal definition of what I like to do.

I like to call it "Functional Art," though I'm sure plenty of people would disagree with me. Frankly I don't give a damn what other people think.

I guess, in that sense, some of my father's design sensibilities rubbed off on me as well. In order to start any project or conceptualization, I feel it needs to have a purpose.

Nor, on the other hand, do I feel that a work having a purpose, whatever that purpose may be, precludes it from being an artistic work.

Being a Liberal Arts Major has influenced me in that respect as well. There's far too much specialization in the world. So much, in fact, that I feel people lose sight of the fact that all those many varied little nuggets of knowledge, art, science, religion, and all the subcategories that those divide into, are really the same thing, a narrative of the human experience. No one is exclusive from the other except by an arbitrary decision of society and our own minds.

Design, whether it be in print or on the web, is all about producing a conglomerate of different types of information, but put to the tune of functionality and ease of use. It's a mode of working that I find to be in tune with me, with what I know, what I've experienced, and who I am.

I like to include rather than exclude things. I bring my knowledge of philosophy, science, history and so forth into what i do as an artist. The bureaucracy that permeates our day to day life has us habitually looking at other people as ideas and skills that fall neatly into categories. Too often, we substitute summary for understanding. I prefer to look at each individual as a nexus of many different concepts and proficiencies.

That's why this site, a gathering of my ideas, I've dubbed a "Kollectiv". While it's not the sum total of what I've learned and experienced, or of who I am, it is a sampling, and as a sampling I hope to present it in a way that is as diverse and eclectic as i am.

I hope you enjoy looking through it as much as I enjoy designing it.