Ed Rice is a West Point native and graduate of West Point High School. He served in the United States Navy from 1971 to 1975, completing three Western Pacific deployments before earning a Bachelor of Arts degree from Belhaven College and both a Bachelor of Fine Arts and Master of Fine Arts from the University of Oregon. While at Oregon, Ed served as a Graduate Teaching Assistant and later taught printmaking for a faculty member on sabbatical. In 1986, he founded Graphic Arts Productions, a screen-printing business he operated until his retirement in 2018.
The arts have always been an important part of Ed’s life, and blues music has been a lifelong passion. In the late 1970s, he saw Mississippi blues legends Son Thomas and Sam Chatmon perform several times and became a close friend of Emmett “Piano Red” Hudson, whose music and storytelling left a lasting impression on him.