EVHS grad Caleb Heale nurtures his creativity

Caleb Heale didn’t really start his creative ventures until about five years ago.

Before that he was more into math and computers. His brother, Bobby, was the artist in the family.

“His interest in art sparked mine,” said Caleb Heale, 24.

His brother is a tattoo artist, and is well on his way to making his mark.

Though he can’t draw, Heale has a steady hand in Photoshop and a good eye for photography.

An East Valley High School graduate, he has attended Spokane Falls Community College for three quarters but is not in a huge hurry to finish schooling. He’s content to work just enough hours while snapping photos and making T-shirts the rest of the time.

Heale got hooked on photography five years ago when he borrowed a camera from a friend. Now he shoots every day, using either a digital camera or old-fashioned film.

“When I don’t spend time creating things, I feel an immense emptiness, almost even a sickness,” he said, “But I don’t experience it often because I have come to be able to feel it coming, and the second I notice it, I make a point to get to work.”

Sometimes he digitally manipulates the photographs. His work is stunning, young and raw.

He makes capturing a moment or an idea look easy.

One day he spent a long time waiting for an osprey to return, and he snapped her carrying a large branch to her nest.

Another photograph, showing a red leaf stuck to a barbed wire against a dark background, defies the concept of conventional boundaries.

Yet another photograph shows two farm-fresh eggs in a nest of twigs; one egg is cracked, and light pours out.

When he is not in the field, Heale works in a large room in the basement of the Newman Lake home that he shares with his father.

The room originally functioned as a darkroom but has evolved to include his hand-built screen-printing contraption, which is made of wood with hinges and metal clamps that secure the screens in place.

The screens are placed over the blank T-shirt, and fabric ink issqueegeed (like a window washer) across the screen.

The final product is a one-of-a-kind T-shirt representing Heale’s original work that often incorporates his photographs.

One T-shirt design, the silhouette of a tree, is a copy of a photograph that he took onto which he added birds. Another T-shirt design depicts people worshipping a pile of televisions.

Heale’s goal is to be creative every day.

“I continue because I am rarely satisfied. If I created things that I thought were perfect, I’m not sure if I would find any need to continue,” he said.

“As I find flaws in my work and seek out solutions, I grow, and new ideas are created, and thus, new flaws are exposed.”

He recently put together a portfolio of his photographs and will have his Web site, www.permanentpressapparel.com, up and running soon.

Heale is only beginning; his basement studio has a lot of space to fill.