One nice thing about being an artist is that many of my meetings are in casual or hip settings. For example, there’s a group of artists I’ve recently joined, we meet each week at this quiet dive bar in Southside to work on a book project. Everyone comes with their materials and we all show what we’ve accomplished over the week. Since it’s a bar, of course we enjoy drinks while sharing career advice. During the first meeting, I noticed a piece of colorful artwork on my beer bottle label and discovered something that made me a little nostalgic:

Artwork By Caleb Morris, for Blue Moon Brewing Company.
You see, several years ago I did my first oil painting. Compared to what I can do now it’s not even that great, but Molson Coors liked it enough to purchase it for their art gallery and use the piece for their advertising:
Working on “La Luna Azul” fueled my passion for creating, and that project was really the one that started my adventures in developing symbolic work with a popular slant. This was also the first piece I ever sold, which gave me the confidence boost I needed to pursue an art career. I always hoped Blue Moon would do another artist series for their brand, seeing these labels made me happy that they’re continuing the tradition and I hope the artists in this series will enjoy great success from the experience. This series is pretty strong, here are a few more pieces in case anyone’s curious:
You can also check their home page gallery for details. If Blue Moon decides to do another contest like this one I’ll be sure to share the news!