Since as far back as I can remember I knew what I wanted to be when I grew up... an artist! One of my earliest memories was in the fourth grade. The teacher asked the class if anyone could draw, the entire class pointed to me.

I attended Enfield High School in Enfield Connecticut and graduated in 1982. While in high school I took every art and graphic arts class they had. The Graphic arts class only had levels 1 and 2. I lobbied the school to make a more advanced, Graphic Arts 3 class and they seriously considered it. Unfortunately, there was not enough money in the budget. When they ran out of art classes for me to take, they put me into independent study. Independent study gave me a lot of freedom to pursue advanced art and graphic design studies. In my senior year I was voted "class artist" by my graduating class.

I had wanted to go to art school after graduating high school, but my family could not afford to send me. I needed a job and so I applied for and got a job working in the pressroom at Treasure Chest Advertising. This company produced the kind of advertising circulars for large retailers that you find in the Sunday newspaper. My job consisted of 12 hour days, standing at the end of an enormous web press stacking advertising circulars on palettes. One day, after a few months in the pressroom, I decided to bring some of my artwork in to show my coworkers. They were all impressed and one of them told me that I should show them to the head of the art department. I was not even aware that Treasure Chest Advertising had an art department! I showed them to the art director and he offered me an apprenticeship right

away. The next day I found myself out of the hot and dirty pressroom and in the clean, air conditioned offices of the art department. Wow! What an amazing difference. They immediately had me training in the time honored tradition of paste-up. Soon after that I was learning fake four process color. This is the equivalent of colorizing line-art, like a comic book. I then moved on to creating line art of retail products from companies like Sears and The RX Place for use in their advertising circulars. In 1988 I started Mike Bennett Graphics as a side job to my full time employment with Treasure Chest.

In 1989 came a day of destiny. A salesperson from a computer graphics company visited the art department to demonstrate a computer graphics program. The entire art department gathered in the conference room for the demonstration and I was front and center. When the meeting ended and everyone returned to their work I stayed behind and practiced on the machine the rest of the day. I had never used a computer before that, but I was fascinated and immediately took to it as though I always had. Once we had purchased and installed the computers it wasn't long before I became expert in the program and began to train others. My interest did not stop at the graphics software, I was fascinated with computers in general after that. I bought my own P.C. and I taught myself in their use and maintenance and was eventually put in charge of maintaining all of the office computers. After ten years of working at Treasure Chest I was laid off during a company "downsizing". It was the mid 1990s when it seemed like every company was downsizing employees. I immediately went to work for another graphic design company in Springfield Massachusetts. After a couple of years there, I decided to try Mike Bennett Graphics full time. That was back in 1996 and Mike Bennett Graphics has been full time ever since!