In the early '70's Marc Ward left his native Central Florida after the astonishing invasion of "Mickey", a giant, 3-fingered cartoon rodent. His destination was East Tennessee, and it was here that he earned the always lucrative and much prized, Bachelor of Studio Arts degree. Ward believes in the words of Groucho Marx, who said that “the world has no boundaries for those who have no marketable skills.” During his college years, he bought a camera to shoot his three-dimensional and two-dimensional artwork. His roommate, who was a newspaper editor, saw him with the camera and enlisted him to be the photographer for the college newspaper. He says it was a make-fun-of kind of rag... His first incursions into the darkroom were to take baby’s bodies and put student's heads onto them. Administration bigwigs in compromising positions and tanks attacking the library.
So, his first contact with photography was not some great artistic mission. It was just a satiric assignment. To this day he still makes images, not takes images as many artists do. A few decades later, Ward is still exploring the worlds of “no marketable employment skills” with the skills he has learned over the years never being directly employed. He currently lives in East Tennessee in a funky, cool house on a large lake with Kathy, his beautiful wife, who manages their art gallery. The couple services 3 alarmingly large and lazy cats. He has received many awards including Honorable Mention Award, Nature Photographers Network award, Annual International Photography Master’s Cup award, National Association of Photoshop Professionals, to name just a few.
