It’s easy to spot the inspiration for Ty Williams’ art: bearded sea captains, smiling fish, flotillas of brightly colored boats, surfboards of all shapes and sizes.

Of course, when you split your childhood between the U.S. Virgin Islands and Maine, an unshakeable fascination with the ocean comes naturally. That fascination, combined with his unique artistic style, has helped land the 2007 Flagler grad several high-profile exhibits, installations and even work for well-known surf companies and retailers.

In 2009, he designed an entire room at Ace Hotel, a hip boutique hotel in New York City, and also hosted a solo show at Nico Café in Tokyo. And in 2010, he co-curated “Out East” at midtown Manhattan’s acclaimed Atelier Gallery.

“Ace was a huge honor, because artists I’ve looked up to like Shepard Fairey and KAWS also did rooms,” he said. “And Atelier I really loved because I got to be the odd, playful guy in the mix doing takes on Hemingway, alcoholism and New England culture. But going to Japan and meeting people who are stoked on what I’m doing with my hands, even though I can’t speak to them in their own language? That’s my greatest achievement.”

But the fun-loving Williams hasn’t restricted his focus just to high art. He’s designed T-shirts for surf companies like Hurley, Roxy, Patagonia and Insight, and contributed lines to mainstream brands like Urban Outfitters and Baron Wells. He’s even translated his growing business knowledge into two appropriately named retail projects: Buoys, a storefront he co-owns in Kanagawa, Japan, and Yacht Club, a T-shirt company based in St. Augustine.

“The retail side is interesting, because you don’t think about how people will interpret your art when you’re drawing it,” he said. “I toyed with the decision — ‘Is it cheapening my art? Am I becoming a brand?’ — but I knew I wanted to be involved with surfing, and since I didn’t like a lot of the industry’s designs, I figured making T-shirts would be a great opportunity to change different parts of surfing culture with my art.”

Williams almost didn’t become a proper artist at Flagler, though. He actually majored in communication, but centered his marketing and advertising projects around creative concepts, while also drawing inspiration from friends in the college’s art program to pursue his own drawing and painting at home.

“I would draw brainlessly after class if the waves weren’t good,” said the lifelong surfer. “But in my early 20s, I realized I had things I wanted to say. Oftentimes surfers get pinpointed as not having much to say, but I think a lot of them do. Yes, I surf, but I also have worries about success, my family, my future. And I have a heart and a brain that work … at least sometimes.”

That quirky sense of humor prevails in Williams’ work, a visually appealing mish-mash of hand-drawn eclecticism, catchy aphorisms like “Daytona 1974” or “Nothing Dies Of Old Age In The Sea,” vintage photos, and even antiquated ads torn from long-forgotten sailing magazines.

“When I moved to New York after college, I was really affected by street art,” he said. “And I liked the imagery I would find in old books. So I appropriated some of it into my work.

Williams’ ability to cheerfully nudge the often-stoic parameters of the art world hasn’t gone unnoticed. He’s been featured in publications across the United States, Europe and Japan, and he teamed up with fellow Flagler alumni Jeremy Dean, ‘02, and Casey O’Connell, ‘01, to tackle December’s Art Basel mega-gathering in Miami. After that, the itinerant wanderer will head to Japan, Australia, and then … well, he’s not quite sure.

“I’m open for anything,” he laughed. “I’m single and ready to travel; I want to give my art a go for at least another year so I don’t regret sitting around while I’m young.”

But if there’s one hard truth, it’s that Williams will end up somewhere near an ocean. “Some people run from surfing and the ocean,” he said. “But I can’t run away from the things that made me start drawing in the first place.”

Four years ago, when Jeremy Dean finished his documentary “Dare Not Walk Alone,” the 2002 Flagler alumnus had incurred $30,000 in debt. He spent countless hours securing interviews with reluctant subjects. And he wasn’t sure whether the film — which examines both St. Augustine’s role in the 1960s Civil Rights struggle and the Oldest City’s more modern inequalities — would ever find a receptive audience.

But in 2008, after numerous film festival awards, theatrical screenings and a DVD deal with Wal-Mart, “Dare Not Walk Alone” received its highest honor yet: an NAACP Image Award nomination in the category of Outstanding Documentary. Dean’s film was in good company – fellow nominees included the critically acclaimed Hurricane Katrina movie, “Trouble The Water,” along with documentaries produced by HBO, ESPN and CNN.

“We were really the only independent film [in the category],” Dean said. “But to be compared with other productions of that caliber was very rewarding. We didn’t win, but the nomination opened a lot of doors and gave us a stamp of approval from the African-American community, which was very helpful.”

Dean attended the 40th Annual NAACP Image Awards on Feb. 13 in Los Angeles, with Executive Producer Stephen Cobb. He came away from the experience in awe. “It was a pretty big moment for anyone dealing with issues of race and class,” Dean said. “All the biggest names were there: Beyonce, Jennifer Hudson, Stevie Wonder, Muhammad Ali, Russell Simmons. Once the major stars showed up, it was like being a spectator at a big performance.”

Dean said his biggest personal highlight was meeting the cast from HBO series “The Wire.” He acknowledges the benefit of making industry connections at such a major event. “Not to say that ‘Dare Not Walk Alone’ is going to get picked up by Fox or anything,” Dean laughed, “but it’s always good to meet people for future projects.”

Those projects include combining fine art and film, finishing a screenplay and developing a documentary about surfing in the inner city “favelas” – or shanty towns – of Brazil. Dean was also chosen to serve on the screening panel for the 2nd Annual New York Surf Film Festival.

After spending seven years of his life on “Dare Not Walk Alone,” Dean still remains involved, speaking on college campuses and at other engagements. . Cable channels Sundance and IFC recently passed on the film, but it’s still under consideration by HBO. “Our next big hope is for a television deal,” Dean said.

Laughing, he added, “I didn’t know this, but distributing an independent film takes almost as long as making it.”

When wounded soldiers are being transported out of Iraq on a massive, medically-equipped C-130 or C-17 transport plane, there’s a good chance they will find Flagler alumnus Thomas “Jerry” Ricketson there to help treat them until they reach the safety of a military hospital abroad.

Ricketson is not only certified as an emergency medical technician, but also flight-qualified to treat patients. As a staff sergeant in the U.S. Air Force, he’s been risking his own life as he and the rest of the crew of the fully-equipped medical transports, think hospitals in the sky, fly wounded soldiers out of combat zones like Iraq.

“The majority of the patients that I’ve carried recently are traumas due to IEDs [improvised explosive devices],” he said. “There are a lot of impact injuries, lacerations, amputations and head wounds. If the injury is severe enough to limit the soldier’s ability to continue to do their job, they need to be replaced. [Aeromedical evacuation] is how that process starts.”

Ricketson, who graduated from Flagler in 1992, thought he would end up in the broadcast journalism field, but a year later he decided to join the U.S. Air Force. He was originally working on
B-1 bombers, but after re-upping for active duty in 2000 after spending time in the Reserves, he found himself attached to the 375th Aeromedical Evacuation Squadron. That’s where he’s remained, weathering deployments to Germany, Japan, Jordan and Qatar.

Although Ricketson isn’t technically based inside military hotspots like Iraq, his work as an air medic has found him flying in and out of combat zones time and time again to pick up military
personnel whose injuries require more specialized or intensive care.

Currently, aeromedical evacuation crews operate primarily from Al Udeid, Qatar or Ramstein Air Base in Germany.

“We normally start the mission heading to Ali Al Saleem, Kuwait, and then we enter the Area of Responsibility and fly into Kirkuk, Tikrit, Mosul and Balad, Iraq,” Ricketson said.

Balad is considered the “clearinghouse” for Iraq because it has the largest military hospital. From there, Ricketson said, “crews from Germany pick those patients up on regularly scheduled missions and take them either to Ramstein or Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, which is the largest U.S. military
hospital in Europe.”

But Ricketson emphasized that serving in Qatar and flying from air base to air base — many of them only miles from live battlefields — presents its own set of challenges.

“Most of us don’t really appreciate the magnitude of taking off and landing in a combat zone,” he said.

The scariest and most dangerous part of the journey comes as the plane descends or as it slowly takes off again. “Cargo airplanes are very large targets on approach or takeoff, and we try to do most of our missions at night to minimize enemy opportunity,” he said.

But, as in any war, close calls do happen. “Last year, when I was in Al Udeid, it was the first time I’ve ever been on a plane that has legitimately ‘popped chaff and flare,’ ” he said, “meaning someone was likely shooting an RPG [rocket propelled grenade] or missile of some kind at us as we took off.”

“Chaff and flare” refers to defensive counter-measures performed by pilots flying in and out of combat zones, and Ricketson described the maneuver as “creating a larger heat source and therefore drawing the missile away from the plane.

“When the inside of the plane lights up because the outside just lit up, it’s very sobering to realize that you could have just been on the news as the latest casualty,” he said.

Serving in the military involves plenty of sacrifice, and Ricketson has seen both sides of the air medic coin, operating not only above the battlefield, but also on the ground in Germany. He stressed the importance of the ground crews, describing them as a major part of the aeromedical evacuation operations team.

“The ground crews facilitate the on- and off-load of the air crews, their equipment and the patients, and there is a sense of urgency to get the patients to a fixed medical facility, as there is with any emergency patient move.”

The ground crews also help to coordinate the military buses and ambulances present when a plane full of wounded soldiers lands, leading to understandably hectic situations.

“I’ve had up to three Ambuses and two ambulances offloading at the same time to different facilities,” Ricketson said.

And although the six to seven-hour flight in and out of Germany can be taxing, he saves the most admiration for the men and women operating out of Qatar: “The air crews at Al Udeid face the same challenges four or five times per mission, since all of their pickups are in Iraq.”

Fifteen years of service and many critical missions later, Ricketson still belongs to the Aeromedical Evacuation Squadron, although he is currently receiving retraining stateside.

He said at some point, he would like to retire from the Air Force and move back to Central Florida, where his nine-year-old daughter Logan Nicole lives with her mother.

svgallery=medic