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 sculp-tural series based on the bicycle. I recognized that such a venture would probably preclude my chances of any sales gallery representation... However, after a previous stint as a com-mercial artist (to pay my out-of-state undergraduate student loans), where I had experienced first hand the relationship between commerce and art, I was now committed to protecting my  creative output from any commodification, in order to reclaim the sovereignty of my studio.

The “Bicycle Medium” has not gone unnoticed, for I have received 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), SFMoMA SECA Artist Award Nomination (2004), and an Artist Assistance Grant from the Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation (2007). Over this period my artwork has also been featured in 10 solo exhibitions.

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