My father and my uncle were both University Art Professors, and I had a somewhat bohemian upbringing, as various artists and aesthetic discourse filtered through our home. A guest artist from NYC saw some of my abstract studies in 1966, and commissioned a painting from me. I decided to use the proceeds to buy a new 10-speed bike. To my surprise, my parents told me that 10 gears were ostentatious - that I would be shifting above my station - and restricted my purchase to a 5-speed model. So, at the early age of ten, I first became aware of the bicycle’s powerful sociocultural signifiers!

The term “home” above is somewhat euphemistic, for at the age of 18, I’d lived in 15 different houses, and attended 12 different schools. Looking back across this uprooted childhood, it’s amazing I wasn’t some delinquent, but rather that I excelled in school. My father insisted we move annually in order to exorcise his creative demons. Ultimately, my mother left, my sister left (for Mexico), and I left (a full-ride California State Scholarship) for art school in the Midwest.

At the end of my MFA studies at UW Madison, I decided to dedicate myself to a large sculptural series based on the bicycle, as a broad reexamination of this historically pivotal, human-powered machine. Part Leonardo da Vinci and part Rube Goldberg, the bicycle is elegant in its simplicity, sublime in its efficiency, and universal in its kinetic appeal. Beyond that, many human themes found within the Humanities, such as fantasy, ambition, hubris, locomotion, competition, etc., are readily recognized within the humble bicycle, as its history is intertwined with human aspirations and invention.

I took on a number of outside jobs to support my studio practice over the years, such as; Commercial Art Director, at a novelty apparel startup in Minneapolis, MN; Professor of New Genre, in the School of Arts and Humanities, at the University of Texas at Dallas; Institutional Arts Administrator, at CMF Vacaville, CA, (where I built and oversaw a large, inmate/patient participatory arts program in the prison’s psych hospital wing); and Nonprofit Arts Consultant at an experimental theater program for developmentally delayed adults, in Petaluma, CA. 

My artwork during this time led to a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Sculpture (1995), a Pollock-Krasner International Artists Award (1998), a California State Arts Council Fellowship in New Genre (2001), and an Artist Assistance Grant from the Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation (2007). During this time my artwork was also featured in ten solo exhibitions.

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