3/08 - I'm currently showing my artwork at the Malibu Gallery in Malibu, CA. To get easy directions, Click Here or call 310-456-5393.

3/08 - To buy an iPod, iPhone, Razr Phone or laptop cover featuring my art, Click Here and checkout gelaskins.com!

3/08 - To buy a wallet featuring my art, Click Here.

2/08 - Sakura, maker of the pens and inks that I use in my art, picked me up as one of their featured artists. Click Here to checkout Sakura's artist showcase!

2/08 - Press is good but local press gets your neighbors to call. Click Here to read what the locals think of my work!

1/08 - To read a review of my contributions to Gelaskins from the Macintosh Journal, Click Here.

VC Star Article 2

Life after Amgen

Employees who didn't get gold watches from a company they had devoted their careers to find worthwhile endeavors after being laid off, accepting buyout packages, or leaving on their own...

In August, Amgen Inc. announced its first downsizing since it was founded more than 25 years ago, a move that included slashing up to 14 percent of the company's worldwide work force.

At its headquarters in Thousand Oaks, an undisclosed number of longtime employees accepted buyout packages, while about 675 other employees were laid off. Some workers who sensed trouble left the company before the cutbacks occurred.

Many of those who severed ties have moved on to other endeavors near their homes where their families are rooted. Some have stayed in the biotechnology field; some have returned to previous careers or interests; and some have pursued new paths.

Read the stories of five people who have left the world's largest biotechnology company and top private employer in Ventura County.

Chuck Trunks

Chuck Trunks didn't plan to leave Amgen. After more than 18 years with the company, the 43-year-old joked he was going for the gold watch. But when the company offered some long-term employees early retirement packages, he decided it might be time.

Early in his career with Amgen, Trunks worked in the facility that made EPO, the anemia drug that boosted Amgen into a biotech player. A later version of the drug, Aranesp, became a blockbuster seller.

But sales have slumped in the wake of a study that raised safety concerns. Amgen, once a darling of Wall Street, decided to restructure after seeing its stock sink, fueled partly by some analysts who questioned the company's growth potential.

"I got my job at Amgen because of EPO, and I lost my job because of EPO," said Trunks, a biochemistry graduate who was hired as a molecular biologist.

He felt like he rode a wave until his surfboard got stuck in the sand. So he stepped off.

An artist who has spent the last four years balancing work and life, Trunks decided to devote himself to his passion.

His artwork is dominated by black and white, though he has ventured into colored inks in his latest pieces. His pieces are full of symbols.

"I'm most excited about putting something out there artistically that presents something positive about society and have people talk about it," he said.

Trunks, a Camarillo resident who most recently was a principal business analyst for Amgen, squeezed all he could into his work day so his evenings were free for drawing.

"You have to make the change to go from a hobby to a full-time thing," he said. "I knew that going in."

He's also spending time detangling his work and personal lives. At Amgen, he watched friends find spouses, have children or buy houses. He compares his years at the company to a formative relationship, such as a first love or one's college years.

"I met the exact perfect person in a company," he said.

"To walk away from it it's so entrenched in me. It's unbelievable that it's over."

Trunks started at Amgen when it was a fledgling company. He went to work in shorts and a tank top. Over the years, the company evolved with more people in $100 shirts, $75 haircuts and "a BlackBerry in one hand and a latte in another."

The company changed from leaders "who had science degrees in our back pocket" to bringing in more business people from other industries, he said. That sometimes made translation of the science and mission difficult.

Trunks said his job was to marry the two halves by trying to communicate across that gap. He can draw out what happens at Amgen from the time a potential drug is discovered to when it's used in a doctor's office.

Trunks said he wasn't one of the people who bought too much house or too many toys, so he's comfortable in his early retirement.

"I'm looking forward to surviving outside the bubble of Amgen," he said.

He expects that's the case for most people leaving Amgen.

"These are self-made people, self-motivated, self-managed," he said. "They're not going to sit around and do nothing."

Photographer: Joseph A. Garcia (Star staff)

Author: Allison Bruce (Star staff)

Section: Front Page

Copyright, 2007, Ventura County Star

A graphic mind pays off

Amgen business analyst makes use of diagrams in art

Chuck Trunks thinks in pictures.He has parlayed a method that helped him learn history in grade school into a lucrative career and recently expanded it into an innovative art technique as well.

To help remember facts in history class, Trunks drew a timeline, writing notes around pictures.

"Now I have a career where I am paid to do that function," he said.

Trunks, who lives in Camarillo, is a principle business analyst at Amgen Inc. in Thousand Oaks. He started working as a genetic engineer at Amgen 20 years ago, but as the company expanded, it found a need for an analyst who could graphically depict how various business functions operated.

Trunks explained his job with the analogy of a doctor using an MRI to diagnose a shoulder injury.

"I am the person who creates the MRI, and the shoulder would be any business function within Amgen (the body)," he said. He uses the same mental process to create his artwork.

"Yet they are vastly different looking," he said.

Like his business diagrams, his artwork is loaded with meaning. Unlike many abstract paintings, the message is easy to follow in his pieces, rendered in stark black and white in India ink on Bristol board.

"I love pen and ink," Trunks said.

He spent years searching for his creative voice and a way to connect with an audience. After seeing a film on the German impressionist Max Lieberman at the Skirball Cultural Center, he realized his precision black and white abstracts were that voice.

"But it was U2 that kind of slammed it home," he said. He heard the band play in Dublin in 2005.

"I thought, 'Why are these guys so relevant?' They have important social and cultural messages inside as individuals, but they are gifted in putting that message in song and communicating it," he said.

Trunks' topics range from technology and modern culture to love.

He works in series of six pieces following themes like "Interference," "USA" and "Relationships."

He puts in 60 to 100 hours on each piece, using no rulers or templates and working in negative. On the back of each piece Trunks includes a description of its meaning and his motivation.

Individual pieces in the Interference series have titles such as, "iPod," "Wi-Fi," "You Got Mail" and "Can You Hear Me Now?"

"My opinion about technology is that it's great to have, but it's kind of messing us up culturally," he said.

"Everyone has someone to talk to; everywhere you go, people are on cell phones or lost in their own world of music."

"i-Pod" started with a big flower in the center, like a "candied Krispy Kreme doughnut," music notes moving up its thorny stem, Trunks said.

"I get the main idea down and then step back and think," he said.

"When it's finished, it's not exactly what I had imagined. I am just as surprised and delighted as if I am seeing it for the first time," he said. "It's kind of invented in small pieces along the way. Each component has to support the message." You can't make a mistake, he said.

"When people first see one of the pieces they say, 'Wow, this guy has some time on his hands,'" he said, "but when they read the back they connect to the art and understand. The best part is they offer their ideas on the subject, and now we are talking about how it relates to them," he said. "Then I feel I have done my job, and this piece of art has had the intended impact."

Trunks grew up in Philadelphia. His grandfather worked for the telephone company and would bring home large pieces of paper for his grandson to draw on.

"I would start in the corner and would fill the entire page," he said. His mother, a classically trained professional artist, couldn't understand why he worked that way.

"I would draw the components and they would always come together. That's still how I work. It's like knitting," Trunks said.

"I wanted to be an artist, but I was a good student, knew how to memorize, and I got how things worked," he said.

He went into science and earned a degree in molecular biology from North Carolina State University, but also studied art at the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia.

Trunks has participated in several exhibits, including the "New Artists, New Images" show presented by the Arts Council of the Conejo Valley at the Hillcrest Center for the Arts last summer.

He was recently named a featured artist by the Wallspankers Project (http://www.wallspankers.com).

His work can be seen on his Web site: http://www.chucktrunks.com.

- Recommendations of artists to be profiled in this section may be made to Nicole D'Amore at ArtProfiles@Roadrunner.com or 405-0364.

Caption: Nicole D'Amore / Special to The Star

Author: Nicole D'Amore Correspondent

Section: Community

Copyright, 2007, Ventura County Star

Harvest season for VCArtFarm.com

Camarillo business owner Jim Brent takes local art into cyberspace

By JENNY LOWER

Selections from VCArtFarm.com (left to right): "Bluegrass" by Steve Mitchell; "Palermo" and "California Street" by Elain Thompson; "Fountain of Youth" by Chuck Trunks.

Jim Brent remembers the day two months ago when Sabzi, a world-famous contemporary abstract painter, ambled into his Camarillo art framing store. After walking around a bit, the artist introduced himself and pointed to one of his works hanging on the wall. Brent was incredulous, especially when he realized the artist lives in Thousand Oaks. "I was shocked. I didn't even know."

The story has a happy ending: Sabzi later invited Brent back to his studio for some wine. But the incident highlighted an important issue.

"There's not much support for local artists in this area," he says. Brent should know — he has spent the last 15 years supporting artists, first in Seattle, where he studied art and ran a framing shop, and now in Ventura County, where he grew up. Since opening Museum Quality Framing in 1998, the store has become a hub for several notable artists, many of whom have complained about the dearth of local networking opportunities and asked Brent for advice. Despite the county's considerable talent, choices are limited. Beyond professional artists' groups, community events such as ArtWalk and some local galleries, there are few places for a working artist to generate publicity.

Brent listened. He did some research, hired a computer-literate friend, and seven weeks ago unveiled two websites designed to help Ventura County keep pace with its burgeoning talent pool. VCArtFarm.com provides a forum for local artists to display and sell their work; registered users can browse the listings and post comments. VCPhotoBase.com allows users to upload images for use in public and private galleries. The sister sites are designed to create a user-friendly online community where artists "can all promote each other." Most importantly, they can deal directly with their buyers, and the site takes no commission.

So far, so good. Since their launch, "The traffic's been crazy," Brent says. The sites have 44,000 hits, and ArtFarm has sold three paintings. While many artists want their own Web sites, few have the technical know-how and income to afford them. For those looking to post their work on communal networks, the choices can be overwhelming. Such sites operate on a global scale, featuring work from places as far as India and Russia. It's easy for a local artist to get lost in the shuffle.

ArtFarm and PhotoBase scale things down to a smaller, more intimate size, so as not to overwhelm either the artists posting or the potential buyer browsing. ArtFarm features several works by each artist, while PhotoBase displays images by category, including county landmarks like the Channel Islands and St. Mary Magdalen Church. Their design is sleek and minimal, meant to keep things simple for artists who "are going to get their daughter-in-law to upload their images for them." PhotoBase also offers additional features such as photo rating for digital photographers who are already adept at navigating the Web.

All this adds up to one savvy marketing move. While Brent is hoping the sites will stimulate the art community, the extra business wouldn't hurt. And given that both Web sites clearly feature Museum Quality's logo with a link to the store's homepage, he hopes that the sites' users will turn around and patronize their sponsor. "We want to see these people coming to us for printing … We're giving them the site in hopes that they'll use us for their services," he says.

The Web sites are on track to recruit more users. Initially, many users were longtime customers, but the sites have since expanded to include more and more new faces. The store has sent out 35,000 promotional mailers as advertisement, and they are hosting a lottery for a free 20-by-20 inch canvas printing on ArtFarm to encourage artists to continue submitting their work.

All this expansion is good, because it means artists are finally getting the visibility they deserve. Even Camarillo, long considered secondary to Ventura's more active and visible art community, is coming into its own. Brent warns not to be fooled by its sleepy demeanor. "You'd be surprised. It's a quiet town, and you wouldn't think there'd be a ton of artists here … It's actually great."

Now that the Web sites are hopping, what lies ahead for Brent? Since he and his wife, Jeanette, had their daughter, Sydney, life has been busy at home. But once things settle down, Brent would like to get back into hosting art shows at the framing store. It is important to keep things moving. "More and more [artists] are popping out of the woodwork everywhere. I'm pretty amazed."

Jim Brent's Web sites can be accessed at www.vcartfarm.com and www.vcphotobase.com.

06-28-2007