Artist Joey Kilrain shatters convention through his award-winning Web-page design company based in New York City.
To a creative visionary like Joey Kilrain, art is found in the unlikeliest of places - including trash bins. One day while strolling to the bank, he noticed a window frame jutting from a receptacle at the corner of Iseminger and Shunk.
Kilrain, then a college student, snagged the discarded item and reconstructed its wooden portion to create a fully usable canvas. His first painted masterpiece was such a success that he scoured his former hometown for additional wooden frames, eventually producing more than 20 canvases.
His motivation? Saving a bundle on art supplies.
"I was always trying to find ways to be more cost-effective," says Kilrain, formerly of the 2600 block of South Iseminger Street.
As they say, one man's trash is another man's treasure.
It is that sort of out-of-the-box thinking that has made Kilrain, now a New Yorker, one of the most sought-after Web-page designers in the business.
Within the past year, he and a friend cofounded Gigapixel Creative. Kilrain, 30, has won scores of awards for designing Web sites that are visually impressive yet simplistically functional.
Some of his company's current and past accounts include Nextel, Pfizer, Time Warner and MBK Entertainment, whose label features rhythm-and-blues songstress Alicia Keys.
Kilrain strives to set himself apart from the field's fierce competitors.
"There are many talented people out there that are doing this sort of work," he says. "But they make me realize if I start to look like them, I'm not being me."
Yet Kilrain's artistic nature has sometimes led to isolation, a feeling that was exacerbated by his parents' divorce and more serious losses.
He now says every experience has helped shape his character.
"All the struggle and the pain I've gone through have paid off," says Kilrain. "At times when I thought all was lost ... I am now able to realize that it wasn't that bad."
GROWING UP, KILRAIN worked on his art in every possible situation. When his buddies were into the break-dancing craze, for example, he drew on the cardboard boxes that they would boogie on.
"It would break my heart afterwards because the boxes would get torn up and I would have to draw it all over again," says Kilrain, whose mother introduced him to the arts as a kid.
As a student at A.S. Jenks Elementary, 2501 S. 13th St., and Stella Maris School, 814 Bigler St., Kilrain resented teachers who prohibited his doodling, which sometimes occupied space on the back of his tests.
He later joined a summer arts program at Hallahan Catholic Girls' High School, 311 N. 19th St.
After receiving an airbrush kit from his mother's former boyfriend, Kilrain churned out specialized T-shirts.
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