We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Jeffrey Caraway a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Jeffrey , thanks for joining us today. We’d love to hear about one of the craziest things you’ve experienced in your journey so far.
This may be a hard story to tell. I just retired from the Marine Corps after 20 years, I was a “combat illustrator” for them. My main focus / expertise was graphic design. During my tenure my wife and I always wanted to be business owners. We started a LLC is 2008 to sell my art and my own clothing line called “Lele Kawa” Hawaiian for “leap of faith.” We produced a full length extreme sports movie called “literally living the dream” that was to encourage people to live their lives to the fullest. 100% of the proceeds went to a veteran therapeutic horseback riding. We wanted this to be a huge success to benefit others and launch our label as a good business for giving back. But we ran into some major hurdles and challenges because I was active duty and funded the whole thing myself. Then you add us moving from San Diego to Okiinawa Japan in the middle of it so we put our business on hold. During this time I still sold art. I got really into making art impact statements out of beach trash and my wife joined the Navy, and had our first daughter. After 3 years we moved back to San Diego and didn’t don much with Lele Kawa. We did a few vendor fairs and did well. My wife deployed. We got moved to the Twentynine Palms, CA. Near Joshua Tree, and super harsh remote desert. Here we decided to convert a horse trailer into a coffee shop because that compliments art. We attended local farmers markets doing well but then we had premature twins. 6 days after they were born I had triple bypass surgery. A weird family history thing I inherited. So that was an adventure and hurdle. In the midst of all this I’ve been collecting Marine Corps memorabilia / artifacts both Marine Corps and camera / art related. I’m working to open the very first Marine Corps Combat Camera Memorial and Museum as well. I retired in Feb of 2022 and we all moved to Casper, WY. We immediately hit the ground running with the coffee shop but quickly realized it was difficult to give the appropriate time needed to be successful so we’re pausing the coffee shop, called “Oates 27 Coffee” by the way. Waiting until our twins get a little older. Focusing on the art and the museum. Everything is set up online at the moment.
Jeffrey , love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
I joined the Marine Corps when I was 17, back in 2002. They sent me to DINFOS, the Defense Information School, Ft G Meade, MD. Where I learned all types of art. I eventually received by BA in Graphic Design from Southern New Hampshire University. My whole life I was blessed with overflowing creativity. Dabbling in all kinds of mediums. I’ve been fortunate to have my art everywhere from the Pentagon, published all over bases in Hawaii to include President Obama using a mural of mine as a back drop, to making a skulls out of cig here the butts that was auctioned off at the annual Surf Rider’s Art Gala in San Diego. Nothing has taken off on a large scale yet, but everyone around me none stop encourages me to keep doing it.
Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?
It’s funny because I thought Marines only killed people for a living. I had one grandpa in Vietnam and one in Korea as Marines. They were very stoic and I looked up to them. I had huge respect for the military and especially the Marine Corps but I didn’t want to join and kill people. Well, an uncle in the Army asked me what I planned to do after I graduated. I said, well I have wrestling scholarships but I’m kind of scared to go to college. He said join the military. I said well, only branch is join is the Marine Corps and I don’t want to kill people for a living. He was like dude, they do more than that. When I found out I could do art, it was a done deal. My driving force to be creative was to motivate and is pure others with my art. To teach, educate, and preserve history. Simultaneously my own personnel art was a similar mission but now I have freedom to do any art I want my primary focus is to encourage people with my faith. To highlight the majesty and redness of God.
Can you tell us the story behind how you met your business partner?
My awesome wife is my business partner. She helps with all the admin, finances, permits, and sanity checks. Keeping us legal state to state. She is amazing at it despite being a full time laboratory director, a clinical laboratory scientist. I met her on the beach in Hawaii. I first saw her on Kailua Beach, Oahu, HI. We were both skimboarding, which is kind of like surfing on the edge of the water. She was sitting down as I surfed by, she jumped up and grabbed a pink board, ran out jumped on her board and wiped out bad. Allegedly my first words to her after that were “that’s all you got?” It was love at first sight. It we knew early on we wanted to be business owners.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://oates27coffee.square.site/?fbclid=IwAR2cTgkveDKOoF-e8nhbcQSymzodOb3WHhn9Q_GxLWkfJTi4uWq6S1ZqDls&mibextid=Zxz2cZ
- Instagram: @jeffreycarawayart
- Facebook: @jeffreycarawayart
- Linkedin: I have one but never check it
- Twitter: Na
- Youtube: I need to revamp this
- Yelp: Na
- Other: We’re in the midst of pausing the coffee shop and switching our square space over to Jeffrey Caraway Art My memorial and museum is @Combat Camera Saints, USMC Memorial Page
Image Credits
Na