Mark Elliott Reed, 1969-2018

Unfortunately Mark was really too young to leave this world but he was an “old friend” because I knew him for a long time. We met when we were both in college and later on we shared an employer for a few years. We had many common interests such as art, hiking, animals and nature. I’m sure I pushed him out of his comfort zone at times because of some of my ideas of what is fun. I used to joke with him that you know who to call if you want to visit scary abandoned buildings, get heat stroke or stand for hours up to your ankles in cold mud! I hope he had as much fun on our more adventurous outings as I did.

Since I learned of Mark’s passing I’ve been looking through a lot of old photos. I have many photo albums of hikes we took together but he is not in many of the pictures. Mark was kind of shy about drawing attention to himself. When I was learning photography he did pose for me on occasion because it was in his nature to be a generous person.

Mark was sometimes insecure about his creative work but I was always amazed by his talent. He could create something interesting in any form of expression that he tried. Before Mark had formal art training, he was a bit insecure about his creative output and unfortunately he destroyed some of his earlier work. I do have some of it in my personal collection so there are some early pieces still around. Even when his artwork was still a bit naive in technique he had such creativity and exuberance that I was blown away. Over the years he worked with drawing, collage, clay, computer graphics, model painting and building, poetry and novel writing. I wrote a review of his first book “The God Hunters” on this old web page here: Book Reviews. I was not only impressed with the quality of his writing but that he had the fortitude to finish a large project like a book. He was on his sixth or seventh book in the series when he passed away.

Mark had a special sense of humor that I really appreciated – surreal and a bit twisted at times. For example here are a couple of lines from one of his poems that I really like:

Flies and grubs speak directly to us…
Geriatric means “no tacos”

I don’t know what that means – but at the same time I do!

Mark’s talent, knowledge and playful sense of curiosity made him a really interesting and fun person to be around. He was also very kind and generous with his resources, including his time. Mark was often available to share fun activities with me and he was also there for me at some really bad times in my life. I read through some old messages between Mark and I to try to date some of the old photos I was looking at. I noticed that although we did a lot together at times in our lives, there were also a lot of instances when I invited him to something and he was unavailable. In the vast majority of cases, this was because he was helping someone else or giving others the gift of his companionship.

It’s understandable that a lot of people wanted Mark’s company. Mark, you left the world wanting more.

Link to my Facebook tribute photo album to Mark:
Memories of Mark Reed