Jason Craban
Jason grew up in rural Maryland, spending most of his free time in the woods hunting and scouting on the same piece of land his family has lived on for over two-hundred years. Together with his grandfather, father, uncle and cousin he helped hunt and forage for all of the family's meat. Bringing in around fifteen deer every year using bows and black powder rifles. Even though his extended family subsisted on at least two meals of meat per day, he had only eaten store bought or domesticated meat a handful of times before the age of eighteen. By the age of twelve he was already running a trap line and as a teen drove a pickup truck with a gun rack on his way to becoming a "hard working’ farm boy and all-around redneck".
In his late teens Jason began to seriously consider a career as a wildlife illustrator but his paintings grew darker and more emotional as his passion to explore the world around him waxed. Jason attended the Pennsylvania College of Art & Design to gain new perspectives on art and culture. When this did not satiate his desire to truly learn, he hit the road, tramping around the country on foot and freight with no money and no destination. Stopping now and then in a friendly town scavenging both wild and recycled meals, he squatted local plots of land and wore a loincloth with leggings and a capote, attire in which he both slept and lived in lieu of a sleeping bag. On occasion Jason took respectable work in kitchens, intensively training at the de facto skin on frame boat building school, Spiritline/Skinboat School, and in leather craft shops. After spending several years training and then working with a high end boot maker, he began is own custom shoe making business called Laughingcrowe Leatherworks. Somewhere in there he had a beautiful baby girl and is the proud papa of the coolest young individual he has ever known. After years of wandering, Jason now calls Portland, Oregon his home. He is involved in a couple of musical projects, the foremost being A Minority of One. Jason is a lover of good home-cooked food and good friends to share it with. He is fascinated with and strives to "remember the way folks lived before this current age of convenience and forgetfulness, when we worshiped the wind and felt the spirit that moves in all things move though us".
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