This is one of the best examples of the kind of work I like most and you wont even find it on my resume.

There was a little art museum a few blocks from my place called the California Museum of Art Thousand Oaks, or CMATO, because all good museums end up with acronyms. It operated out of an old Taco Bell, which was enough to draw me in.

I started following them online and won a signed print in a giveaway. When I went to pick it up, I met the executive director. By the end of that conversation, I was, more or less, their head of marketing.

It was mostly volunteer work. For the next five years, there was a steady stream of, “Here’s something we want to do. Can you figure out how?” And I’d figure out how.

Some of it was normal marketing. I ran paid social for an exhibit launch that brought in so many first-time visitors the staff started asking where everyone had come from. I rebuilt the website. I built virtual exhibits when COVID closed the doors.

But the part I loved was everything nobody had a playbook for.

One exhibit needed video running on screens from open to close, on a perfect loop, for months. So I built the setup myself after disappearing down a pretty deep rabbit hole to get Fire TV Sticks do something they were never designed to do. 

I also built an audio tour from scratch. I interviewed the artists, wrote the stops, hosted the files online, and turned the whole thing into a QR-code experience visitors could access from their phones. It made the exhibit feel more finished and gave visitors another way into the work.

The museum eventually moved into The Oaks mall and later closed for good. I kept their website alive on my own long after the lights went out.