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James White
Creative Drive
It was a lot of exploring and trying to figure out how I can use the computer to make myself better as an artist.
James White
Growing up in Truro, James White was known as the kid who drew too much.
"As soon as I could pick up a pencil when I was four, I started drawing Superman and that kind of stuff and I hit a couple of obstacles where teachers actually called my parents in and told them, 'You've got to tell him to stop drawing!'"
Luckily, James' parents did no such thing. By the time he graduated from high school in the mid-1990s, he was naturally drawn to the arts. He took a year of Graphic Design before moving into the Interactive Technology program at NSCC's Truro Campus.
"The stuff I was learning in the 90s was so new that the people teaching it had only been doing website design for a year or two prior to that. It was awesome. It was all about timing, too, because I learned it just as the internet was picking up steam."
He admits he became addicted to the technology and found it hard to tear himself away.
"The best aspect of going to NSCC was having all this stuff available 24 hours a day, which was great! So I'd finish my projects and then from 8 o'clock at night until 3 in the morning, it would be like 'Wow I'm going to go make stuff! Yeah!' "
Once he graduated James found work straight away in webpage design. But still, his creativity didn't stop at the end of the work day.
"I had this computer and it was an extension of pencil and paper which I was typically doing forever. It was a lot of exploring and trying to figure out how I can use the computer to make myself better as an artist."
This experimenting eventually turned into his own blog called 'SignalNoise', an online portfolio for his increasingly creative works of art. It has grown from 150 visits per month to over 100,000, attracting the attention of big name companies like Google, Nike, Wired Magazine and Motorola.
"SignalNoise is a place where I make art projects for myself; then I upload them, talk about them, describe how I did them, with no other goal in mind. Nike, for example, would see that and go, 'Oh, we've got a tee-shirt campaign coming up and we'd like to hire you to do three tee-shirt designs based on this concept or style that you've done on this personal piece.' So it's kind of like, free advertising."
Although he still keeps his day job designing web pages, his passion is slowly turning into his livelihood. In May 2010, James held his first real art show, printing off his work, and showing it at a gallery in Toronto. As for the future, he has no idea what it holds. But he does give a lot of credit to NSCC for the possibilities that await.
"I look back with fond memories on NSCC because it gave me such a great base; it was actually a perfect way of getting my footing, really rather quickly."
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