The Road to Rush Creek

In 1969 I was kicking around LA just starting college and working, playing music—
the drums. My band did Bar Mitzvahs, weddings, cocktail parties and played something new called “jazz-rock”, anywhere they would have us…usually for free or drinks.

It was about that time I met Don Peterson. Living in Topanga Canyon, Don had the fantasy life of a respected photojournalist and artist and I became his student, assistant and friend. One day at a gallery in Venice I asked Don, “how do you look at art?” He said, “Have a look and say to your self, I like that or I don’t like that.” I didn’t get it at first, but as I was exposed to more art, I began to realize just what he meant.

I worked for Don for a couple of years while attending college, assisting him on shoots and learning to print his work. I helped him promote fine art photography and we helped stage some successful group shows in the LA area with lots of the best fine art photographers in the country including: Duane Michaels, Leslie Krims, Robert Heineken, Minor White, Nathan Lyons, Mary Ellen Mark, Wynn Bullock, Imogene Cunningham, Aaron Siskind, Ron Mesaroes, Victor Landweber and many more.

Later, I would relocate to the Bay Area and become a commercial printer working for ad agencies, photographers and fine artists. Within two and half years I opened my own lab, Frog Prince & Company, which soon became San Francisco’s premier resource for color printing. Don eventually came to the Bay Area and we were able to work together again, printing his current work, until his untimely death in 1982.

During this time, I printed original prints, posters, album covers and ad campaigns for clients such as Levi Strauss, Wells Fargo Bank, The Gap, Apple Computer, Robert Mondavi, Walter Landor, Hal Riney, Goodby Silverstein, Chris Blum and Michael Schwab to name a few. I also maintained my fine art printing skills by working with photographers such as Richard Misrach, Galen Rowell, Bruce Steinberg, Arthur Olman, Jim Marshall, Alan Krosnick, Rudy Legnami, Art Rogers, Terry Heffernan, Peter Gerba and many others. My years of printing were guiding me to appreciate art and the artist, but I needed to learn more.

My journey of discovery would take me to New Mexico where the light is magic, the chilies are hot and the friends are forever. There I studied film, video and wrote about Georgia O’Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz. When I returned to San Francisco, I started a video and film post-production company and ran it successfully for over a decade. Over the last nine years I’ve represented artists, started an Internet company and learned about what Francis Coppola calls, “the new electronic cinema. ”

In northern Marin, just off the highway, not far from where I first lived when I came up from LA over thirty years ago are wetlands. Rush Creek Preserve is old watershed where hay and other crops were shipped in from and went out to the Bay. As you walk the trail away from the highway the noise fades and the sound of birds and wind takes its place.

Going back to my roots, printing and working again with artists, has become a new “watershed event” in my life. Under the circumstances, I thought it was only appropriate to call my company Rush Creek.

I like that. Thanks Don.

Steve Zeifman

P.S.-----

WAIT, there is a new chapter in the story! I have taken myself and Rush Creek to the heart of Santa Fe. Circumstances have brought me back to join the wonderful artistic community that thrives in Nothern New Mexico. To be continued......

            ©2006 Rush Creek Editions