As a kid growing up among the concrete canyons of New York City, Jim Syring would sit in the movie theater of his blue-collar neighborhood watching John Ford's Monument Valley westerns and dreaming of living in the West. He spent his teen years hanging out in the cafes of Greenwich Village where he was first exposed to beat literature and modern art. In a Hemingwayesque gesture, he enlisted in the Marine Corps at eighteen and served in the Far East where he studied Haiku and Zen. He is constantly striving for a Zen-like balance in his life.
He has worked i...