People often ask me if I like to do puzzles, or tell me I’d make a great dentist (based on the intricate poking, prodding, scraping and filling that I do in my work).  I used to feel that working on mosaics was a way to bring order to chaos, by rearranging a multitude of tiny pieces together to form cohesion.  Realistically, for me, it’s none of these things.  Rather, it’s the possibilities that can come from a variety of pieces and materials.  It both astonishes and entices my mind.  Something about discovering an unknown combination or design that doesn’t exist in the world, is intoxicating.  This is how I feel when I am creating mosaic art.

Mosaics are not a fluid art form; they don’t blend into one another like oil paints, or mold into figures with soft lines that gently curve.  They are rigid and abrupt and can be unforgiving.  However, it’s the adventure to create these illusions, with proper coaxing of the medium, which I find intriguing.  I work with ceramics, glass & stone, like a linguist when they are interpreting.  I feel like I’m giving a voice to materials in a new and expressive way so people can visually understand what the gathering of pieces have to say.

ABOUT ME     

My background is fairly diverse. I grew up with a WWII veteran father who was a radio operator during the war. With the classic DIY mentality of that age, my father built everything he thought up and as soon as I could hold a soldering iron, I was right there with him, grinning, watching the sparks fly and smoke come out.

Growing up I would spend hours every day making stuff up to build. Hacking and circuit-bending old surplus gear to the threshold of destruction, building something that held no “valuable” purpose other to satisfy my curiosity. Sometimes just to make smoke come out.

While I never completed any formal engineering training (electrical or otherwise) I taught myself what I needed to know to become a sound engineer, build and repair musical instruments, amplifiers and musician’s egos. This led me from Oregon to California in the mid seventies where many musicians roamed in need of such services. Not long after moving to San Francisco I joined forces with a partner, built a rehearsal/recording studio and shortly after was back on the road mixing live sound and rebuilding what was broken the night before.

Late in the eighties to gain some “consistency” and to “be home more often”, I took a swing at a “real” job which became another real job and so on and so forth until 2009 when a corporate stooge finally rubbed my last nerve. I pulled the plug and went back to making stuff up. I went back to school to learn welding, sculpture, metal arts, AutoCAD, Solid Works and I’m still going whenever I can.

MY WORK

Life seems overly complicated to me. It can conjure up vague, formless images as placeholders for ideas I don’t fully understand or care about. The work I create can go in any direction fleshing out these placeholders using any medium that suits my needs or is within arm’s reach. I often make jewelry, or giant fire breathing sculptures, or sound emitting objects, or things which either wave at or whistle with the wind. Occasionally I will explore an idea in different forms from small sculptures to painting to jewelry. Other times I will make a piece one way, one time only because it has satisfied my curiosity.

I make colorful mixed media paintings. The subjects vary from urban scenes to landscapes. I try to show a reality that might not be obvious but uses a combination of elements that are surprising.

I want to make an emotional connection with the viewer that will captivate your imagination, draw you into the story, and be memorable.

It is my intention to create thought provoking, one of a kind pieces of art. I started painting fabrics in 1972, this evolved into a fashion/wearable art business. My fabrics eventually went into the HOME DECOR market. I'm currently designing re-assembled jewelry, hand painted/dyed scarves/shawls/ wall hangings & mixed media collage.. 

I was inspired to photograph Crustaceans after finding containers of crabs, shells and bugs in my parents garage where they had been hidden and placed in jars for the last 53 years. I photographed the Crustaceans and made beautiful prints but I needed to take things a step further. Working with my hands has always been a love of mine - particularly working with beautiful woods, since I was sixteen years old and I apprenticed a master cabinetmaker. Recently, I've combined this love of creating beautiful objects with my career as a professional commercial photographer, in creating Photographic Cubes. Each cube is hand made and these measure 2ft x 2ft and house four archival photographic prints covering four of the six surfaces of each cube. The two remainder side show the ornate wood of the cube. Hence, the cubes can be viewed from any angle with varying effect. The cubes are self contained units and can be displayed in any number of ways including stacking them upon one another. They can be made in any size and configuration. I wanted the cubes to become their own entities and combining the sculptural with the photographic without taking away from the photography but adding to it and making it something new and alive.

Metamorphic Ocean Art

We can only begin to fully comprehend and truly experience the world around us as we actively attempt to face its entirety in every given moment, while adjusting ourselves perpetually to its growth.  Metamorphic Functional and Figurative Ocean Sculptures (Metamorphic Ocean Art) is a way for us to approach the expansive breathing soul of our planet by incorporating its living spirit into our material proximity, thus smearing the line between the dynamic nature outside and our constrictive, man-made dwellings.  

In tradition with Nature Art, these pieces use ocean life as the backbone building material.  And although each item partly dries in the absence of ocean water, it, none the less, retains its original agility.  Constantly changing its shape and properties in the context of its surrounding environment—or metamorphosing, it may be regarded as another living part of it. 

Through their evocative shapes and arrangements, these figurines are a life form with a distinctive soul and spirit.  Often surrealistic in their nature, they may resemble predatory creatures with fantastical features.  To surround oneself with their likeness is to embrace the dangers of the real world and accept the “original sin” of humanity—as first proposed by the Romantics and Symbolists at the turn of last century—thereby better appreciating the beauty and romance of life.

Arts and Crafts proponents rightly pointed out that we, as humans, may desire to incorporate nature within our immediate environment to better suit our inner instincts regarding the comfort of a living space.  Metamorphic Ocean Art revives this call amid the modern awareness of the importance of the natural environment.  With their evocative forms, “breathable” material and oceanic origins, these objects incorporate global life and eternal vision into the everyday functions and décor that we touch in the given moment, everyday.

I love the shape, design, “feel” of industrial objects.  I search these objects out at garage sales, flea markets, dumps, attics, construction sites and roadsides, add them to my collection and then get to know them.  In time their individual contours, textures, compositions suggest a whole – something new created from the found – that stands on its own as a complete system.  My WaterContraptions create soundscapes that afford relief from the urban hum, attract birds and their songs, provide self-sustaining plant habitats and “soften” any garden or home environment with the sight and sound of moving, falling water.  Each piece is completely one-of-a-kind, made to the order suggested by its reclaimed elements, held together by my tried and true “fountain plumbing” technique and made personal by the setting you provide.  Every WaterContraption also comes with a foolproof prescription for it’s new owner: Listen, watch, relax, repeat.