Volume 48 - No. 39
By Mark Carlson
The last televised image I ever saw clearly was of the towers falling on September 11 2001. When the World Trade Center was attacked, I was going blind. For that reason I can still recall those cataclysmic moments as the great skyscrapers dropped like immense tombstones into the dust and fire of destruction. I’ll never forget it.
The year 2001 was a turning point in my life. My eyesight was failing from a hereditary disorder called Retinitis Pigmentosa, or RP. Ever The The Paper Paper -- 760.747.7119 760.747.7119
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since my late twenties, nearly thirty years ago, my sight lost more and more of its ability to show me the world. Night blindness and a narrowing field of vision were followed by cataracts and diminishing clarity. Soon bright clear days looked gray and gloomy. By 1999 even my color perception was gone. And this spelled disaster. I was a graphic designer, an artist. My entire career depended on being able to see clearly. I lost my job and suddenly found myself without a direction or future. I was trapped in a void between
light and dark, between the clear past and the unknown future. But a wonderful light soon appeared to guide me forward. And his name was Musket.
Being an artist was my goal since I was a boy growing up in Northern California, when I found I not only loved to draw but was considered talented at it. I had always been a very visual person, preferring to see more than hear. I was fascinated by the colors, patterns and varieties in nature. Growing up in the 1970s, there was no shortage of bright and garish col-
ors everywhere I looked. Fashion and art, psychedelic posters and other icons of that era were a feast to my eager eyes. My artwork reflected my view of the world in lurid shades of every color in the rainbow. I wanted to be the next Norman Rockwell. In junior high and high school I won awards in art contests and by the time I entered college in 1979 I had gained some minor notoriety for my work. Yet it wasn’t until I moved to San Diego in the mid-1980s that I made the decision to seek a career as an artist. The idea of being a success-
Guided By Delight - See Page 2