Sid Webb
Visiting Reykjavik, the capital of Iceland.
I spent two years at the Atlanta School of Art in Georgia after graduating from the University of Kentucky with a degree in journalism. Before leaving Kentucky for art school, I spent a year promoting the idea for an educational television network in Kentucky.
Governor Ned Breathitt found money to begin construction of the network and I continued to help and advise while in art school. After leaving Atlanta, I came back to Kentucky to become the first art director for the new TV network that was to go on the air just a few months later in September, 1968.
After five years of working night and day as art director, I took over as the executive producer of a series of 36 KET/GED programs that had half its budget spent and no useful scripts or programs completed. I managed to get it on track and the series completed, and I am proud to say that over a hundred thousand people nationwide watched our GED series which helped them pass the High School Equivalency Test and enabled them to attend college.
I was an early advocate of using the digital canvas to create art and to make giclée prints. In the year 2000, I finally got around to creating and hosting a television series that introduced the “Digital Art Studio” to public television audiences across the country. For 20 or 30 years, my tools and brushes were primarily computer related because I had developed something in my hands called an "Essential Tremor". (I never once thought of it as "essential"). Over the years it gradually worsened.
Fortunately, in 2014, at the University of Kentucky Medical Center, I underwent a procedure called "Deep Brain Stimulation," which stopped the tremor. I now have a battery implanted in my chest with a couple of wires leading from it to a point near the center of my brain. A small amount of electric charge now corrects my tremor.
With a remote control I can turn off the battery every night to prolong its life. My tremor returns immediately, but it doesn’t matter since I sleep through the night. Amazingly, when I turn the battery on in the morning I feel a surge of energy in my body and a few moments later I am again cured. And every morning, I am exceedingly grateful for this modern miracle.
I can now hold my camera steady again and draw and paint on paper and canvas. I have also become a decent craftsman and wood artist. Using a lathe and other woodworking tools, I can now produce beautiful wooden objects.
MORE . . .
I discovered at an early age that I was NOT cut out for landscaping. ---