It's all about me!

Adam DormanSalutations,
I am Adam (that's me on the right). Web fella by day, creative at night. I have a long and storied history that would not - at first glance - appear to fit into an individual lifetime.

Hailing from the international trading port of Liverpool during the 20th century, I had always been curious and creative and would while away hours with pencils and paper while lying on my grandmother’s carpet in front of the television. Reams would scroll by as my scribblings scoured sheaves of paper. You know, they say you always remember the teacher that inspired you the most. Television was my favourite instructor, boasting vast expertise, unrestrained enthusiasm and an eclectic curriculum, no education can compare. And no education is what I obtained from my pedagogic catechism.

I began tinkering with programmable calculating machines as soon as I could get my hands on them. I learnt to program in my early teens. It was only natural that my love of art and technology would collide and, wherever I could, I forced the machines I used to express my patterns and doodles as far as they were able. As computers (as people are now calling them) advanced, my scribbling improved. Even in so far as one might conceivably call them craft.

But a man’s independence is something he must attain of his own labour. I took private boardings and sought employment to cover my expenditure.

During my early working career, I became a printer's engineer, setting printing plates and repairing machines dating from the 1800s. I was a label maker's engineer, printing toe tags for mortuaries, destination notes for cross-country trains and value labels for banker’s coin bags. We were still setting type in lead back then. A mirror came in very handy when checking your spelling (especially where I’s and E’s are required to be adjacent). It was here that I sustained the first of my life-altering (though not threatening) injuries when a plummeting punch set nearly separated a portion of my finger from the rest of my person. Luckily I survived my ordeal. It was a valuable reminder against letting ones attention slip while engaging in idle gossip. I wear the scars to this very day as a serious reminder that a lack of attention to detail can have lifelong consequences.

As I developed and grew beyond the grease traps and ink smears, I left engineering behind. The experience was instructive and had imparted skills that would live long in utility. However, the call to challenge my senses to higher delights was irresistible. A life of extremes called to me as I tumbled into a career advising clients on the nuances of wines and spirits from around the globe.

With wine you can travel without moving; from the estufas of Madeira to the slopes of Vesuvius, on to Yallingup on the Margaret River and finishing up with a whisky from the foot of Mount Fuji. My customers and I would share tall tales of tours of wonder taken over the period between lunch and supper. Artistic inspiration struck in the on-glass paintings and models made for window dressings for our many promotions. An American sparkling wine assault on Champagne, a monster wine bottle attacked Sydney Harbour, the Colosseum flooded with wine, a Scots Guard's kilt blown by the wind like Monroe's dress. All conceived and executed in a state of sobriety. I performed for audiences at wine tastings and even encouraged select members of my congregation to run their own. I can not say if I am responsible for many cases of gout. But I can happily report that due to my enlarged (though architecturally sound) liver, I managed to avoid any serious fibrosis before the winds called to me again.

I was in the wilderness, aimless and idle. Though still engaged as a merchant of wine, the ravages of time had taken their toll and torn the sails from my schooner. After a brief, but tiring, interlude to overcome a malevolent bout of cancer, the continuing cavalcade of celebrity clients constantly clamouring for viticultural sensations palled me into resentment and apathy. Though I still appreciate the fine flavours of both grape and grain, it is always with a melancholy nostalgia for the best times spent in the company of Bacchus. I looked to art to tease me from the turmoil of my tedium.

Migrating from Liverpool to London, I decided to enrol in a series of classes to facilitate in creativity coursing through my circulatory complex once again. My instructor was kind about my work but was too anchored in traditional techniques to effectively push my work in the direction of my gaze. Additionally, the other students were more interested in the shapes of each other, than the marks they made on canvas. However, despite distractions, I was once again visited by creativity’s muse.

My confidence cultivated, I curated a collection of my creations and transferred it from my Amiga personal computer to a VHS video cassette. With the assistance of a former school colleague and long-time friend and with my portfolio as testimony, I secured an appointment with a small company of fellows who were rendering services to the British flagship air carrier of the day.

It was at British Airways, as a contractor to the communications department that my wings finally fully unfurled (both metaphorically and analogically), as I travelled truly world-wide offering advice and passing judgement on the corporate presentations of the directors, executives and clients of the airline. Travelling to the Middle East, Eastern Europe and as far afield as America, Australia and Japan. Given free rein to rework the communiqués of my colleagues in order to engage their audiences in the comprehension of their expositions. I was a monster.

However, and it always ends this way, the romance of air travel was faded far ahead of my appearance on the stage. Though the company was fine and the benefits a boon, a life spent in hotel rooms and conference suites is a poor relation to true adventure. I was moving without travelling. I cast myself into the void of the self-employed.

While eking out a meagre existence on the fringes of the corporate entertainment trade, it was now that I learned of the mayhem vanity and jealousy can wreak. My former employers seeing my departure into freedom as treachery, engaged in a campaign to defame and libel me toward my former colleagues. Putting business on hold to defend my integrity resulted in the loss of the majority of my clients and plunged me into poverty.

There was no logical option but to seek gainful and permanent employment once again. Leveraging my compositional presentation skills, I entertained an offer of engagement from an establishment in the business consulting marketplace. My adventures behind me, I settled into the mundane existence of a drone in an institution. I performed many of the same tasks as those in my former high-flying enterprise, but the stimulus was less than galvanising.

Having been introduced to the wonders of the world wide web quite recently, I found a bright spark of inspiration to tunnel away from my indolence. Re-tooling my inventory, I moved from the old world of 35mm slide decks to the bright shining future of the internet.

Emboldened with the purchase of a domain of my own I reached across the globe. Finally able to exist everywhere at once. Not travelling, not moving, simply being. I could offer my works without the burden of time, space or language to limit my intercourse with the world. My work was transformed. No longer bound by the requisitions of administrants, I was free to carve my vagaries into forms of my own choosing and know I would find an audience, however infinitesimal.

As ever; entropy enters from avenues obscured by myopia. Years passed and my appointment as internal webmaster seemed as resolute as granite. Commerce, however, is fickle and takes flight from fright with little inducement. My function was misplaced and re-materialised near the 19th-century royal residences of Karnataka in India. I was disinclined to follow and was discarded to the mercy of the state while I once again sought engagement to ultimately plead the blessings of Plutus.

After canvassing corporations for months, my quest ultimately came to a conclusion with my current occupation. Leaning on my consulting history, technical proficiency and creativity, I was engaged by PA Consulting, where I labour at their sufferance to this day as their CMS service owner and website manager.

And while I idle, I create.

So here I am, barely out of long socks and short trousers but decades out from the harbour of home, beseeching your appreciation of my artistic expressions. It is my aspiration that you find gratification in my work. If not, perhaps I could plead a moment of pity and a wry smile.

Thank you,

Adam