PATRICK J.
O'CONNOR.
Hello ... I'm
I'm a Jacksonville, Florida-based
LANDSCAPE
designer
portfolio
experience
GREEN ROOF
PRODUCT MANAGER
Ics Group, Inc
Representing
Carlisle-Syntec | Latin America
Torrance, California: 10|2008 - 9|2011
I INSPECTED YOUR ROOF.And it's much worse than we suspected. There's a 3 inch layer of dirt up there and it's all covered with vegetation. |
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I WORE MY HELMET TODAYSo, can we slide down it now, or nah? Asking for a friend. |
HEYYYY! BIG PRESENTATION, I SEE...Lookin sharp up there, dog. Always knew the BAGGY LOOK would come back in...So, wow-- I guess that makes you a visionary with fashion, too. |
MIJA, YOU KNOW WHAT I SAID TO HIM:I said, 'Here. Take this aloe vera plant. You're gonna need it, too, because you are SO hella BURNED.' |
THAT GREEN ROOF MOCKUP LOOKS PRETTY DOPEBut your Comex trainees built one that is flawlessly badass. I'm sorry, Patrick, but you may empty your cubby and return to the U.S. |
DOWNLOAD
RESUME
LANDSCAPE DESIGNER
in sole practice
Long Beach, California
& West Palm Beach, Florida: 9|2011 - 4|2023
THE TERM I PREFER IS CAREER PIVOTERAnd yes this is my costume from the production of 'Fiddler' I was in at the Torrance Dinner Theatre Ensemble. But I'm HERE to START TRAINING... and if that's a smile I detect on your face, then it looks like your job just got a whole lot more easy-breezy, Monsieur Cheezy. |
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I ATE ALL YOUR EUPHORBIASAnd they were all just simply YUMZSH. |
WHERE IN THE HELL HAVE YOU BEEN?We've been patiently waiting here for you to start spotting us. SINCE 7 am. When we got DELIVERED. Oh, and you're it. The crew was getting cranky, so we sent them home. Oh ya, and snap it up please, cuz Lil' Mizz Dymondia Dirt Flat here says she's gotta go pee... [Ya, I gotta go pee.] |
!!I 'REVISED' everything in your front yard--Like it? No more MOWING! |
REVISED YOUR BACK YARD TOOThe fountain looks cool enough to take a dip in, huh? Just NO diving. Seriously. And no topless sunbathing either. This is not France. |
NURSERY ASSOCIATE + GARDEN DESIGNER
Garden of Eva
Hollywood, California: 9|2000 - 10|2008
WHY HIRE ME?Because I can spot plants TELEKINETICALLY. But it only works when no one is looking. Um. So. Can you turn around for a sec? |
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I'VE ALWAYS WANTED TO BE LANDSCAPE DESIGNERYa know what? Screw that. I have always wanted to be a ramp agent at an airport and direct pilots in cockpits of big jets carrying hundreds of people what to do. Like this means HOLD IN POSITION, CRANING IN 72" BOX JUBAEA CHILENSIS. |
IF I WERE A FLOWER, WHAT WOULD I BE?Oh. I'd be an opium poppy. Cuz then I'd be 'DOPE'. |
OOOO! YOU DID CYCLE HOUSE?NEAT! But wasn't their REALITY SHOW on, like, a billion years ago? |
STILL HERE, CHULO?K. Hate to say this but everyone is over at the AMERICAN HYDROTECH green roof presentation. DAMN dog!! Waste of a nice outfit, too! |
about
San Francisco, December 1989
P
atrick loves all things green, and all things design.
His interest in these began early in life. And if interests were like stars, then these were merely the brightest in a constellation which was no less than teeming with them.
Hardly idle were any of young Patrick's interests—nor merely passing fascinations.
Even as a youngster, whatever sparked a kind of beholden wonderment, would in turn drive an enterprise of self-immersion, and he would go to great lengths to learn all he could about it.
He would study it, draw it, mimic it, build it, dismantle it, rebuild it, and in time, he would develop a rather accomplished and innate understanding of whatever such an interest drew of his fascination.
Patrick was relinquished into state custody foster care as an infant and was adopted by a then-childless couple a few months later in San Francisco, California. His adoptive parents would provide ample resources throughout his youth to cultivate his many drives and interests.
Not surprisingly though, young Patrick's interests, as well as his aptitudes, differed from those of his new parents.
In school, he excelled in language studies, natural sciences and art. Math and history, on the other hand, required more diligence to learn and apply.
And quite unlike his adoptive kin and many of his schoolmates, Patrick was creative. This creativity manifested itself in a kind of industriousness that was willful, energetic and prolific.
Patrick possessed a zeal for constructing, fabricating and creating all kinds of things. His drawings were detailed and expository, leading to exploration of other media including drafting, illustrating & painting.
At any given time, he was engaged in a variety of urban planning, geologic, aerodynamic and meteorologic projects—often simultaneously.
The most memorable of these included a working erupting volcano, a tornado generator which produced vortices from dry ice vapor, an orange Braniff International 747 model under siege by firecracker explosives, various human physiology models, commercial aircraft, jet engines, rockets, models of Star Trek's Enterprise, its shuttlecraft Galileo 7, as well as Klingon and Romulan war vessels. Later he would construct a mockup of the Enterprise's Transporter Room with a working control panel.
If there was one direct legacy which Patrick adopted from the O'Connor family hearth, it was gardening. Patrick's father enjoyed vegetable gardening, and his mother amassed a perennial collection from the transplanted stock of her mother-in-law's gardens in the Adirondacks. Growing up in Fairfield County, Connecticut provided an ideal setting for gardening. The gardens he planted in the home of his youth would be the first of many, many different gardens he would plant throughout his lifetime. These include practically everyplace he has resided, including southern Brazil, foggy San Francisco, arid L.A. tropical SE Florida and lush, rainy northern Florida and eventually, the gardens he would be commissioned to create as part of his life's occupation. After graduating with a BA in dramatic arts from Bard College in upstate New York, Patrick relocated to California, where he would explore a variety of work interests and avocations in advertising, publishing, touring professional theatre, a side adventure to Brazil where he taught English, and, eventually, a return to academia to study landscape architecture. Today, Patrick's knowledge of plants encompasses much more than an ability to identify them, or relate from personal experience their specific cultivation preferences and quirks. While it is rooted in the realm of gardening, it has continued to expand and broaden through a curriculum vitae which is firmly established in celebrating plants well beyond the convention of cultivation. Patrick has practiced landscape design in a variety of unique contexts for 20 years including the studios of other designers, contractors, and developers.
reMODified:
Two residences I reMODelled & made mine
NATURAL BORN:
Visualist + Visualizer
Communicator
Perfectionist
ARCHITECTS:
John Lautner
Gretta Magnesson-Grossman
Pierre Koenig
LANDSCAPE DESIGNERS:
Roberto Burle Marx
Louis Benech
Thomas Dolliver Church
AESTHETIC:
Modernism/Mid-century Modern
Craftsman/Prairie
Late-1960s Futurism
OBSESSIONS
Commercial Aviation
Severe weather phenomena
Plants, cultivation to taxonomic origin
PURSUITS
Animation + AI visualization
Storywriting + Social critique
Teacher/Mentor
DEAD HEROES
Carl Sagan
Jim Morrison
Robin Williams
Leonard Nimoy
FASCINATIONS
Geodes + Volcanoes
Astronomy, ETs + UFOs
Human physiology + psychology
MACABRE DELIGHTS
Commercial aviation disasters
Jeffrey Dahmer + serial Killers
Artist + celebrity suicides
SECRET WEAPONS:
Lethal vocabulary
Eagle-eyed perception + Incisive observation
Falo Português, y quando preciso, Espanol
FUNNEST GIGS
Stand up@The Belly Room/Sunset Blvd
Ad sales for Odyssey Magazine SF
Rep cast Sick & Twisted Players, 'Carrie',
"Very Brady Fri. the 13th', 'Dressed to Kill'
Off B’Way Touring Cast ‘Making Porn’
LAX, SFO, SEA, HOU, BOS
Fibonacci and the Golden Spiral are themes of these "extended-version' logo animations I created for the site when it launched in March 2014, and relaunched 10 years later in March 2024
Audio is excerpted from 'Les Yper Sound' by Stereolab
While completely unrelated to landscape design, horticulture or the like, these videos capture a few of my other interests...