Travis is a Marine Corps veteran in Central Texas who loves to ride and has found something meaningful in wildlife photography. He talks about how time outdoors helped him make the move from the Marines back to civilian life, and through his photographs he hopes to get other people outside, paying attention to what’s around them. He’s really good at it. I hope he gets to do it full time.
Years ago, when my wife and I had just started dating and were living in Simi Valley, Travis had a side project called Counter Poison: shirts, hats, stickers, and a leather keychain with the name carved down the strap in his own lettering, a sunburst stamped in each corner. Counter Poison eventually stopped. I held on to the keychain, one of the shirts, and a beat-up hat I refuse to get rid of. I always liked what he was making and wished he’d kept going.
That keychain gave me ten letters: C, O, U, N, T, E, R, P, I and S. I traced the carving as it was, uneven edges and tool marks included, then drew the other sixteen capitals, the lowercase, numbers and punctuation in the same rough hand. Those ten letters became Open Road.
The last time we were all together was in Texas for his brother Casey’s fortieth birthday — Casey has been my best friend since art school — the same trip when Casey’s daughter drew the alphabet that became Lady Mae. Both fonts started with something someone in that family made that I wanted to see go further. The larger share of what Open Road earns goes to Travis, to give him a little more room for the photography. I’ve kept his work all these years because it meant something to me. This is a way to share it.