Born in 1944, Webb Garrison (Jr.) was able to grow up in an environment unprotected by consumer safety laws. By the time he was five he had developed a fondness for knives, razor blades and needles. The cutting instruments were the tools he used to carve wood and "make things." The needles were primarily for sewing but also made great points for miniature spears, etc. Though some plastic models were given to him in early grade school his preference remained the old balsa type that consisted of blocks and sheets of that wood. Even then he felt that there was no challenge if all he had to do was glue pieces together. This does not mean that the models he made looked really good, but the process was more important to him than the end result.

Being the son of a minister Webb's childhood was spent in SC, GA and TN; his youth, in IL and IN, moving about every three years. Being deemed more mature than he really was, he was allowed to attend college after his junior year in high school. There, at Emory University, he punished himself by taking more courses that he knew he would not like than ones for which he had a natural affinity. This probably had to do with his concept of a well rounded education rather than any thought of what he would do for a living once he was out of school. With a love for math and sciences he ended up with a default major in sociology, a discipline he despised. Graduation found him facing Viet Nam; so, he decided to continue his education with a Ph.D. in clinical psychology. As it turned out psychology was even more intolerable than sociology - only because Webb had the foolish idea that in graduate school his own theories would be cultivated and appreciated. Getting into the U. S. Army Reserves allowed him to drop out of the program and go back to undergraduate school. Emory would not allow him back since he had already graduated, but Georgia State didn't seem to care. There he got the equivalent of a math major and most of his premedical requirements, but by then his wife of two years announced that she was pregnant and it became necessary to give up the part-time jobs and get serious about making enough money to support a family. He took an entry level position in programming and systems analysis.

After a relatively short time at his job, maybe three years, his wife's parents offered him a job that was described as real estate development. It turned out to be more of a ploy to take care of their daughter than a serious attempt to increase their own income, and after a disagreement or two Webb quit and began working with a friend in the antiquity business. After shows at the Mint Museum in Charlotte, the High Museum in Atlanta and another in Cincinnati Webb decided to quit that too because too many men were hitting on him. He was in a dilemma. He had to have a job but didn't want to have to apply for one. It was then that he decided to try drawing and painting. He was about twenty-eight at the time, young enough to be able to take the rigors of weekly arts and crafts shows. His original plan was to mass produce abstract paintings but soon learned that he was incapable of doing abstracts and quickly gravitated toward pen and ink drawings of rural Georgia scenes. Each weekend he would make just enough money to last until the next - but no extra. By then he and his wife had two children.

Feeling no particular tie to Atlanta they decided to move to Colorado; so, they headed out with no idea where they were going. They would just drive until someplace felt like home. That place turned out to be Loveland, between Denver and Cheyenne, WY. The six months there were difficult and as summer approached his wife and children returned to Atlanta to visit her parents while Webb remained in Colorado to do art shows. The show at Cinderella City, at that time one of the largest malls in the country, looked promising. Webb expected to make enough money there to finance his trip back to the southeast to attend his brother's wedding and pick up his family for a return to Colorado. Assigned to a part of the mall called Cinder Alley where there was little traffic, he made no more than his expenses.

The following week Breckinridge proved to be a good show with a great dealer contact that would last for years. His wife had decided that week that she did not want to return to Colorado and insisted that Webb bring back all of their personal belongings. Instead, he put them into storage, believing that his wife would change her mind - but she didn't for another three years. After his brother's wedding they decided to stay at Lake Junaluska, NC on a temporary basis. Three years passed, another child was born, and the reception of Webb's work dramatically increased. Art shows were done less frequently and more money was made. They were able to finance printing of several paintings, thus increasing the market for his work.

In the Fall of 1976 his wife agreed to return to Colorado. They would be moving around the first of the year. The rental house where they were staying at Junaluska was loaded with stacks of prints that would provide ready cash even though they only had a small amount of money in the bank. Over Christmas Webb refrained from accompanying his family to Atlanta so that he could clean up the house and get ready to move. A bright, windy day and a glass jug of mineral spirits did not change their plans to move but did take away the security of all of those prints. Renter's insurance had never been considered and the fire caused by a freak accident, destroying everything they had accumulated in the three years, left them in little or no better shape than when they had gone to Colorado the first time. They were better off only because Webb had developed a customer base. Their belongings were still in storage in Loveland.

At Lake Junaluska Eastern song birds had been the main subject of Webb's work, but in Colorado a young raccoon, purchased at a pet shop, became the best money maker. Within a few months they were able to buy the house they were renting in Loveland.

Webb was selected to do illustrations for several first day covers issued by Fleetwood in Cheyenne which allowed him to stay home for some months, but all good things must end and within a year and a half he found himself being drawn by the market place to the mid-western states, east of the Mississippi, for an adequate income. The population base in Colorado did not provide a good enough market for his prints.

Three years in Loveland with long selling trips back to the East helped him to make the decision to return to the Southeast. Another child had been born there and increasing financial pressures required a lot of selling. Greenville, SC had been one of his best areas; so, independently of his wife's desire to stay in Colorado he made the decision to move again. This was to be one of the precipitators of their divorce nine years later.

Now we're into the early '80's in Greenville, and a place that had once been a Mecca for a "foreign" artist did little to support a local one. Travelling became a way of life, often with one week at home for every two on the road. During this period he made friends with customers and dealers all over South Carolina and much of North Carolina, Georgia, east Tennessee and northern Florida.

In '81 Webb made the decision that he no longer wanted to have reproductions made of his paintings. Instead he wanted to make them himself. This meant that he had to have an offset press for four color process printing. In Colorado he had observed the process of casting hydrostone using a latex mold. It was only natural that he decided to go into the sculpture business to make the money needed for the printing equipment. He started that business by making original sculptures based on six of his paintings. After making the molds from those originals he began the casting and hand painting process.

The first dealer he called on with his sculptures was in Atlanta. That dealer asked for an especially good price for ordering 12 dozen each of the six pieces. At first excited by the easy sale, enthusiasm waned as the reality of producing product sank in. His hourly rate for that order would not be very good. Most dealers only ordered a few pieces and Webb would make the castings in motel rooms to fill orders for the day.

After a year of the sculpture business he was able to purchase the press he needed to do his own printing. He had watched offset printers in the past and had a fair idea of how to do it. The first attempt at printing had disastrous results. Webb had printed yellow on a thousand sheets of expensive rag paper without setting a mechanism that pushed each sheet into the exact same position. This meant that there was no way to get the next color to line up properly on the first. All learning curves have some expense involved and that was the only way he could look at it. At least he hadn't spent any money on lessons. From then until he dismantled the press in '91 Webb did his own offset printing.

Before moving to Hendersonville, NC in the mid-'80's the fifth child was born. After the move - sick of travelling - Webb opened a custom frame shop and gallery in Flat Rock, NC. Only about a year later he and two of his dealer friends started a picture frame molding distribution company. They imported the majority of what they carried from Malaysia but also dealt with domestic manufacturers. This was fun until a parting of ways over the dispensation of profits. In '89 Webb sold out his share of the company to pursue the molding manufacturing aspect. By the time he had built the equipment and set up his one man assembly line for finishing molding his wife had had all she could tolerate and demanded a divorce.

The hardest part of the divorce was loss of daily contact with the children. That along with a sense of guilt over letting a marriage go bad put Webb on a down hill run. He had not bothered to get an attorney and had agreed to an amount of child support that left no room for his own living expenses. For the next two years he lived in his frame shop and showered with a hose while standing in a galvanized laundry bucket. Customers became more and more of an annoyance coming into his "home." In '91 he closed the shop and moved to the foothills of SC.

In the summer of '90 Webb taught a painting class as part of the adult education program at Greenville Tech. The first night of class he asked one of the female students if they had ever met because she seemed vaguely familiar. She assured him that they had never met. When during the seventh week of class Cheryl volunteered that she had gone to Indiana University and Webb told her that he had gone to Howe High School in Indianapolis a connection had begun, especially since she had also attended Howe, one year behind him. Subsequently finding year books they discovered that they had written messages to each other in those books. The bonding process was very rapid and since Cheryl was also in the divorce process it was only natural that they would marry two years later.

After relocating to SC there was no place to set up the offset press but being intent on producing product that wouldn't be too pricey, Webb started making engravings. He felt that this was a step up for his art work because each print was considered an original rather than a reproduction. The main problem was that the general public did not seem to care whether a print was an original or a reproduction. Although the engraving business worked it was not very lucrative.

After Webb and Cheryl were married, she needed his help in her restaurant to minimize cash outlay. The only way they were able to work together in it was for Webb to see that as her business and not as their business. Their tactics were too far apart to be merged successfully. In December of '96 the restaurant was sold for nothing down and a five year payoff. The new owners made payments for a year an a half but then decided to go belly up and default on all mortgages. Neither Webb nor Cheryl cared enough to pursue the issue because they had at least gotten out of the restaurant with something.

While involved with the restaurant Webb had learned Visual Basic programming and became quite proficient in writing applications. Another interest that developed was large format printing. He completed his learning curve with an HP 750C and then stepped up to a 2000CP in '98.

In the beginning of 2001 they moved to Clyde, NC. That's close to Waynesville and about 22 miles from Asheville.

At about that same time Webb decided to finish a book started by his deceased father. It was completed in the Spring and is available through Barnes and Noble or Amazon - Strange Battles of the Civil War. Cheryl did two other books during 2001 - Iron Disorders Institute Guide to Hemochromatosis and Cooking with Less Iron.

Most of Webb's prints are done on the HP Designjet 130 now. An Hp Designjet 2000CP serves as a backup printer. It will take a piece of paper up to 36 inches wide. It is no longer necessary to have anyone's help for any phase of the process from a finished painting to finished reproduction. It's a true one man operation - just what he has always preferred. Stacks of offset prints were destroyed prior to the move from Greenville. Now the inventory consists of a couple of DVDs, some watercolor paper, and a printer ready to produce on demand.