Wes Pickell was born and raised in Northern Virginia, USA.  He comes from a good family of hard working entrepreneurs.  His father Jeff Pickell incorporated his Plumbing Contracting business the year he was born. His mother and sisters sell real estate and do property management.  As a family they enjoyed life out on the boat, with good music.   Woodbridge is the hometown where he was first exposed to the worlds of skateboarding and street art, and at a very early age he started shaping his independent, art inspired, mind state that still inspires him to this day. 

In his high school years he was quite ambitious, Student Council, Eagle Scout, All County Band, Future Business Leaders of America.  In his business class, he wrote an award winning business plan for a retail store that sold skateboards, clothing, and music.  He also took a desktop publishing class that would be his first exposure to photography, design, and screen printing that would light the spark for his interest in this industry.  Thanks to Mr. Daney for being one of those teachers that make a big positive impact on your life. 

It was also around this time that his love for music bloomed.  He credits skateboarding videos and MTV as major influences on his musical tastes, discovering all forms of music but especially hip-hop, which led him to funk, and jazz.   He bought his first set of DJ turntables from an ad in the back of Source Magazine.  He started frequenting the local record stores, primarily Tower Records, where he also found graffiti zines.  He was attending live music performances all around the DC area.  He joined a local band as a scratch turntablist called Sons of Suburbia, or SOS.  As a group they played shows all over Northern Virginia, and opened for up and coming acts of the time including Jepetto, Sev, and SOJA.  They called him DJ Afro, because his massive hairstyle was worthy of the best hair award in his senior class supurlatives.  One of his bandmates, an extremely talented artist Justin Wood, gave him his first copy of adobe photoshop, and showed him a few things, including website building. 

Off to college at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, VA with a track for Business Management, he wasted no time setting up shop in his dorm room on the 10th floor of Rhodes Hall.  He established 10th Floor Productions as a design and production company.  He easily found himself immersed in the local music scene.  He was designing flyers for shows, and building websites for several of the local Hip-Hop live bands that were ruling the scene at the time.  Infectious Organisms, Jazz Poets Society, Mello D to name a few.   He became very involved with Infectious Organisms, acting as a roadie, and promoter for the band, and their production company Oddity Plushc Entertainment. He did some street team work for major record labels thru Cornerstone Promotions.  He soon formed a band of his own called Poets in Motion, playing the bass guitar this time, it was a strictly “freestyle'' improv trio with an amazing drummer G2, and hip-hop lyricist now known as Joseph Blacfellow

 

VCU at the time was renowned for their art program which made for a very eclectic student body.  The city was covered in art, and Wes couldn't help getting involved.  He and his crew which included artist Nick Rose, Profound79, Jay S., John Fallon, and Tim Dewland, started a website called DREAMLIKEREALITY.com to document the art scene.  

This led to years spent documenting street and graffiti art, on walls, trains, abandoned buildings.   He also at this time started curating art shows with some of the featured artists and local DJs and musicians.   Although he was so busy with all these extra curricular activities, he lost focus on school and had to leave VCU early.  Back in Northern Virginia, he continued his pursuit of art and music while working as a plumber for the family business, Plumbing Services Inc.   He also continued his education with a business internship at a local accounting firm.  But his affinity for art and design took precedence, and he with the grace of his father decided that he should pursue ART as a career, and started attending the Art Institute of Washington DC to study Interactive Media Design.  With his sustained interest in screen printing, he purchased a screen printing setup from Jesse Smith Tattoos and picked it up from Red Dragon Tattoos in Richmond, VA.  With no access to commercial space, he set up shop in a 10’ x 20’ public storage unit.    He scored his first screen printing job for a Richmond Music festival and was immediately hooked.   This was a busy period for him, working day and night, internship, school, social life, he was burning the candle at both ends.   

It was perfect timing for some of his closest friends to propose moving to Philadelphia.  It would be an easy transition, he would continue at the Art Institute in Philly, where they had a much more robust campus, with photography darkroom and media labs, better teachers and more students.  The administrator for his department was Jim Gallagher, a studio engineer from Sigma Sounds Studio.   He found a small art studio space to set up his print shop in a historic textile industry building. 

This building at 1241 Carpenter St.  would be another catalyst for his career.  The front was covered by a graffiti mural by the legendary artist Pose2.The owner Steve Krupnick found success in the promotional products industry with his invention the Flippy Flyer.  A flexible nylon frisbee with a beaded edge that you can fold up and put in your pocket.   He cut, printed, and sewed millions of these things for all types of customers from this building in South Philadelphia near the italian market where Wes lived.  It was said that the history of the building goes back to sewing the tops to the covered wagons going out west.   He employed the help of a young Vietnamese man by the name of Quy Nguyen who was a refugee that came to Philadelphia at a very young age, and worked his way up in the company to where he could buy the printing business from Steve and make it his own, Q&V Screen Printing.  

Steve suggested to Wes to go and work for Quy and learn screen printing with him, and it was a great learning experience.  They were printing high quality, very intricate designs with special effects for brands like MISKEEN, a legendary Philadelphia street wear brand.  We also printed sportswear for Team Sports Planet in their early days.  We had some big military customers that would give us just cut pieces to print.   Wes started back in the screen room cleaning screens, and quickly worked his way up to creating artwork, burning the screens and dealing with customers.   After he graduated from AI, he started building his own book of business and brought in more streetwear brands like UNDRCRWN, ALIFE, and ROCKSMITH, advertising agencies like Red Tettemer, One Trick Pony, Mother NY, and artists Mos Def, Freeway, Beyonce, and Duck Down Records for many years doing business as DLR STUDIOS.  

Of course the art and music of the city drew him in, and he continued to DJ, and be involved with art shows.  He helped curate, and brand an art series from the 1241 Carpenter Street building called “Art at SOPHI” short for South Philadelphia.  Had many successful events, and did a guerilla art campaign, and created SouthPhillyArt.com to support the project.   He then helped to run a gallery called FREEJADE that was on 2nd street, in Old City,  prime spot for First Friday events.   He had several successful shows there, and eventually had to move in when he had an apartment fire and lost most of his things.  It was there he created his greatest masterpiece, TWINS. 

With young children, and because of the economy at the time, Wes felt that it would be better to join forces with a much larger operation to do bigger business, and have some security and found AMPRO in Clifton Heights, PA.  This is one of the largest screen print shops on the east coast.  They are still on the cutting edge of printing and production. These are the folks that do large quantity orders for big companies like WWE wrestling, and Bravado(Sony Music) huge event orders, and private label production for retail brands.   Wes worked there for 12 years and learned a ton, and made many connections that are still resources for him today.   He worked his way up from printer/salesman to marketing manager.  He redesigned all the branding, built the company website, designed catalogs, and hundreds of e-commerce sites for clients.