About Me

My name is Jesse Claggett and I've spent the better part of my life doodling, drawing, and designing away. From my early years as consummate drawer my love of creating images and designs carried me through college as a Fine Arts Major and eventually into a career as a Web Designer. However, more important things have happened along the way; I married a beautiful girl from Belgium and now we have a two wonderful children.

Back in second grade a schoolmate of mine got bored in class and so he turned over his worksheet and drew a picture of a shark. It was just a simple child's line drawing but the act of turning a line on paper into an image was pure magic and so I still believe today. Furthermore there was something in the lines and proportions that he used that evoked a minimalist aesthetic beauty which instantly captivated me. I spent the next few years doing nothing but turning over worksheets and doodling before I thankfully discovered an equilibrium between my artistic endeavors and school work.

Leaping forward I earned a B.F.A. from Calvin College with a general focus on the classic art mediums (drawing, painting, and printmaking) and a concentration in painting. I also took a little photography on the side. I found myself, as well as every other art major, stuck with a non-career related degree in the mid-nineties just as the World Wide Web was conveniently exploding into everyone's consciousness. Very quickly it was realized that some sort of web presence was a mandatory business requirement and as this was all a relatively new field, I, and a great number of other art majors, trudged into the Internet Design business. Thankfully it turned out that I loved working with Photoshop and I quickly grasped the nature of HTML page design both of which led to an eleven year career in Web Design.

On the side I have continued to explore other interests such as traditional artwork, digital artwork, computer modeling, game related illustration and design, cartography, reading and history. In between my stints at Gateway and Burlington Coat Factory I took some time off to follow a girl off to Belgium and then England. She is now my wife and we call Austin Texas home for the time being. We now have two young toddlers. Please check out my Art Portfolio page to see some of the digital modeling and game related artwork I've been experimenting with.