I have always been fascinated by animals, their infinite variety of form, their movement, their inner life.
I have also always been a collector of interesting bits and pieces of metal, parts of machines, mysterious
shapes and weights of known or unknown origin. My sculpture is a fusion of these two lifelong interests.
Growing up in Rockford, Illinois and Commerce, Georgia, my family lived in the country, and my playgrounds
were the woods, fields, streams and lakes surrounding my home. I always had dogs and was very close to them. I
fished almost every day after school during grade school in Georgia, and I am told that my first word was
"fish", because as a baby I loved to watch my father's tropical fish aquarium. I caught snakes
and turtles from the pond and woods and learned how to identify them and what they needed to live. There
were always a succession of different pets in my childhood, mice, hermit crabs, a monkey, chickens, rabbits
and other oddities. My father introduced me to snorkeling when I was about seven and I fell in love with the
amazing world of the tropical coral reef. I collected insects, mounted and identified them and created
display boxes.
My first art classes were in middle school, at Keith school in Rockford, and they were fun for me. I went to
Thacher school, in Ojai, California for my sophomore year of high school (1968) and it was there that I
learned welding and was introduced to metal sculpting during a Saturday workshop taught by a visiting artist.
The following year, back in Illinois, I acquired an acetylene torch and opened a welding shop in my parents
garage. I fixed things and made things for people until the city authorities closed me down for not having
business zoning. I also made sculpture from metal scrap gathered on my neighbor's farm, the largest being a
seven foot tall metal man that incorporated cast iron hand pumps, a gear winch, ice skate blade, tractor seat,
currycomb, ax head, and a highway flamepot.
After high school I moved back to Georgia and attended the University of Georgia. I eventually majored in
horticulture, but I made forays over to the art department to take ceramics classes. I build a wood fired stoneware
kiln at home and made mostly functional ceramics during the 1970's. During this period I was also traveling to
Mexico each winter and made two trips to teach pottery and brickmaking to Tzeltal Indians in a rural area of the
southern state of Chiapas.
I was also raising dairy goats at home in Georgia and during the 1980's I focused on farming activities,
creating the time honored performance art that all farmers do; the winding windrows of cut hay, the field of hay
bales ready to move in the afternoon slanting sun, the forms and textures of the vegetable garden, the sounds
of animals chewing contentedly in the barn.
In 1994 I resumed metal sculpting, at first small wall pieces, then small animals. In 1999 I began to increase
the scale of the work, and in 2000 installed ten large outdoor sculptures at the Georgia Museum of Art in Athens,
Georgia. Since that first museum show my work has been on display at a series of public locations. I enjoy the
creation of my art immensely and am grateful for the opportunity to share it with others.