James Wentz

After graduation I started working for Hanover Pen Corp. in the screen-printing dept. for a couple years and got tired of that, and decided to walk across the street to The Sheridan Press and got hired as a Paste-Up Artist. I did that for about 12 years and really enjoyed doing page layouts and cover design for medical and scientific journals.
Eventually the art dept. was faded out and I ended up taking classes in Catonsville College to acquire new skills in Quark Express, Impostrip, and Photoshop.
At that point I was saying goodbye to doing artwork by hand for a living, and now my graphic arts career was now being done on a computer.
I have scanned customer provided artwork for a couple years and then did some Imposition work which is running a program that organizes pages in a certain fashion that when the sheets get printed, folded, and cut they are in the proper position.
After several years of Imposition, I moved into Production Planning gaining lots of experience in the overall processes and expectations of producing journals.
And finally, I am now in an area called Preflight which is a dept. responsible for taking customer supplied files and running them through several processes that are determining whether or not they are capable of printing without any potential problems down the productive path from start to finish.
While being at The Sheridan Press for the past 26 years I have been involved in many different facets of the graphic arts industry, and I am enjoying it.
I have also enjoyed being in a few rock bands over the past 15 years as a drummer, and have recently retired from a band called "Hard Choice" due to getting hand cramps, so now I just play at home as a hobby when I get the urge.

I wished I would have applied myself more while I was in school, but hey those wild and crazy days of partying will never be forgotten.
I have to extend a special "Thank You" to Todd Arnold for filling in on a school play, at the last minute, that I had a part in, and wussed out. I think it was "Dial M for Murder"...
I really enjoyed the art classes, and Mr. Pfaff had taught me a lot!!! If it were not for art, I am not sure where I would be today.

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