Personal statement -- My Story  i don't think anyone really cares about this but i'll write it out and then hopefully chop it down drastically.  the problem is, i still don't feel like i know what i'm doing...

Growing up, I was always crafty and loved art and making art.   Despite taking art classes every semester, I graduated high school in 1986 feeling like I couldn't draw and therefore was just no good at art.  I never grasped or was taught that it could be as much or more about my expression and my ideas than just focussed on whether I could draw realistically or not.  I gave up, studied Philosophy at university, did collagey fanzines, took photos and made my own prints in a basement dark room and went to work for the railroad, first as a clerk and then as a train dispatcher.  I loved dispatching, but it was high pressure with lots of stress, random drug testing and difficult working hours alternating day and night shifts. In 1997, I stumbled upon a How to Draw Using a Grid class which blew my mind and I finally started learning how to see and draw. It was very satisfying to my soul to make something beautiful and realistic and I left the railroad and went to work in advertising in 1999. I took personal betterment classes at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the School of Representational Art in Chicago and taught myself photoshop to polish my drawings.

I started showing and selling prints of my photoshopped drawings. My work was described as "analog with a digital sheen." but was unhappy and having problems with my neck and right arm from using the computer so much.  Through an art show connection, I got a job at a candy company doing package design and making candy mock ups for the sales department and that inspired me to use photoshop to assist in making various fakes and assemblages.  I did several assemblage installations, the menagerie and the pizza slices but all the pieces were NFS because I couldn't figure out how to put a monetary value on these pieces or bear to part with pieces of a group.

I regret not having applied for more serious study in art at this time, but instead, I struggled with my philosophical underpinnings and how to focus my work and write an artist statement and I couldn't figure out how to cope with the non-fincial viability of installations.  I drifted and tinkered.  I made two largish murals but again there is no financial gain from art crime unless you're Banksy and after one mural was repeatedly defaced and the other completely obliterated it seemed not a helpful direction either.

 

Education

B.A. with a major in Philosophy, University of Michigan, 1990

Studied at the School of the Art Institute, Chicago and School of Representational Art, Chicago 2002-2004

 

Awards:

Cover art for the Seattle Erotic Art Festival Book, 2018

Curator's choice, Around the Coyote 2003

Outstanding Train Dispatching during and Emergency Situation 1996

Physics Department Egg Drop competition winner 1986

 

Press:

Bainbridge Review story about the mural