Swayze Designs

Let me introduce myself. My name is Bill Swayze, or Billy to those who have known me longest.
I have been a reporter for 35 years, writing hundreds of news stories for daily newspapers, including New Jersey’s largest daily newspaper, The Star-Ledger, and now an online publication about the technology industry for New Jersey Tech Weekly. 
For almost the same amount of time, I have been a visual artist and a photographer, always busy drawing, painting, taking pictures, writing, and sometimes mixing it all together. 
Diving headfirst into the arts, I listen to the music I feature on an online radio station I created at www.deeperfm.com
I am always seeing what makes sense.

My creative jaunts usually start on a blank sheet of paper with black fine point pens. Springing to the page are characters with puny heads or very gargantuan ones, and grand startling wild eyes with dark rings. An intense, gigantic mouth with fantastic molars. And cuspids. Or is it bicuspids? And protruding jaws. Sockets with eyes that have evolved from two psychotic dots to a bunch of bubbles. 
This new little guy will take minutes to draw and be the first of his family to stand upright. I imagine. With a name tag that states. “Otto.”  

The essence of my conversations during times of creativity goes something like this:
“Whatchu drawing?” a friend on the other end of the phone call asks
“A guy with lots of teeth,” I answer. 
That makes sense, so I continue

Why do I fill pages with characters and numbers and colorful pockets of buildings? Or take photographs of gargoyles, old train depots, neon lit streets and signs and everything Dia de los Muertos, Day of the Dead?
Because I get to see how people react and connect. The same can be said about photographs. They all have a story and a start amid seas of color and grins, and smiles. They all trigger a feeling. An emotion. To entertain. 

I personally get that when I see the work of photographer Anton Corbijn, for Depeche Mode and U2. And street artist Hamilton Yokota, who goes by TiTi Freak. And Robert “3D” Del Naja, musician and artist in Massive Attack. 
I give the ones I create names, including Cabello Loco, Smiley, Joy Thug, Crooked Grind, Orderlies Otto and Otis at the Booby Hatch who deejayed imaginary parties and coined the phrase, “No party too big or brain too small.”

I do this to add joy to the collective. Create happiness. Laughter. Make someone’s day. 
No. I’m not going to fix what ails the planet. World hunger. Poverty. Drug addiction. 
I’m certainly not going to cure a disease - but I do create something every day to help me make sense of the ups and downs and twists and turns of my own personal journey.