Owen Masterson: "I’m only happy if I have a bunch of balls in the air and I’m successfully juggling them all.”
PHOTOGRAPHS BY ANTHONY MASTERSON
Palm Springs may be a self-selecting locale. In a town where talented people seldom pursue only one talent, renaissance man Owen Masterson finds he fits right in.
“I do keep busy,” says the 2019 transplant from Atlanta. His well-designed life, which has included photography assignments for Palm Springs Life with his wife and business partner Christine Anthony, has flourished amidst “the vibrant local energy.”
Several years before they arrived, he began making art by chance when a prop stylist offered him a box of leftover wood. “A piece sold and next thing I know I’m working with wood that is basically garbage and creating something from it,” he says. “That was exciting to me.”
“Puzzles and Jenga don’t satisfy the output urge. I would rather create a crossword puzzle than do one.”
As a matter of practicality, Masterson moved from cutting the blocks by hand to employing a table saw. “It takes me away from the wood a little, but it pushes me along so I can get to the process,” he says. Process in all its various forms.
“Between writing, recording, taking photographs, making movies, and working on my art, I’m not very regimented,” he observes. “Whatever strikes me, that’s what I do. Each creative outlet informs the others. I can be working on a piece of art and I’ll get a melody in my head for a new song. I’m only happy if I have a bunch of balls in the air and I’m successfully juggling them all.”
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