Eulipian People

In the last post I told about having to commute by bus to my job in Downtown San Jose, California from the suburbs. The job was at Eulipia Restaurant and I chose to apply there because I liked their ad in the newspaper. It was cool and hip and it made me want to be there. I had plenty of restaurant experience at that point and got a job as a waiter. I later became head waiter and manager. This job was going to carry me over until I got a more permanent job or get back into Graduate School. Little did I know I wouldn’t leave Eulipia for 13 years.

What ended up happening was I got into San Jose State University as a graduate student working towards my MFA. I kept the job through graduation. Then I started applying for teaching positions at the college level. I quickly landed a part-time instructor position but a full-time gig eluded me year after year so I always kept my job at Eulipia even as I was working teaching at three different community colleges nearby. Before you know it 13 years had passed. In 1993 I retrained myself to be a computer artist and landed an animator job in Tulsa, Oklahoma and moved away the next year.

Those years at Eulipia were truly wonderful years. I loved the work and the people. I did a lot of drawings of my co-workers both in my sketchbook and larger pieces in charcoal and Prismacolor pencils that got up to 6′ x 4′. I also did extensive photography of many co-workers and made contacts with many customers that led to many photography commissions and projects. I will show those in a later post.

Here are some of the sketchbook drawings from that era, 1981-1994.