posted 5.2016

My earliest memories are images and words of the natural world: a red-winged blackbird flying around at the edge of our backyard in Pittsburgh, with a sweeping hill down to the Pennsylvania Turnpike and a dry field beyond. Another: lighting streaks on the horizon, beyond that distant field that marked the boundary of my world. Today, a red-winged blackbird is a personal symbol of my nascent understanding of “knowing” a thing by giving it a name, of a name as a description, or a connection to another living being not at all like me. The “booger-glee” call is the sound of the arrival of spring, the flash of red epaulettes a sign that new life is about to begin. Meaning-making (with no small influence from an introductions to a study of Semiotics with Tom Ockerse) is at the core of who I am as a designer, artist, and teacher.

My current work as an artist, designer, film-maker and collector or stories revolves around my continued love of finding meaning in the way we as human beings interact, explore, understand, recreate in (or recreate) the natural world.

added 6.16.17

an artists statement is a moving target.

I pulled this off another page to make room for another page.

I think about design as an activity that exists in context. I think about how meaning changes as quickly as context changes and context changes continually. What really do I mean by that and what dos that have to do with drawing. I write this because I am a little frustrated with the lazy distinction between art and design. Ask me about this. If you've read this, maybe you agree or maybe you take issue with this.

I draw for me. The buddha drawings came from a long-standing love of the many buddha sculpture I've seen in galleries, in gardens, in road side shrines. I am saddened by the horrific destruction of ancient sacred sites where history endures because the truths (of who we are as beings) is here and now and always will be.

What do I mean by design. I'll write about that later. For now, this is my front page

Constantly running and shifting, never still. My view of what I do and why I do it has changed dramatically this year. When I have time to stay still and write and commit to a single statement, I might. But then would mean stealing time from the classroom, or classroom preparation, or time spent with a student in my office, or preparing dinner, or talking with my son, or talking at my teenage son, or meetings. Or getting on my bike, and flying through fields into the sun, maybe past a chorus of Spring peepers, or a run in the woods with my dog now getting fat as I haven't been running since I came down with a cold. Or the 5 hours I have on Friday to sew, or the time I think about what my next sewing project is. When I can find the time to make a statement, I promise. I might.