Block Island Hangout

I discovered the art of ceramics in 1982 while studying music composition at the State University of New York at Purchase. The first ceramics class I took proved so rewarding from a creative standpoint that it altered the course of my studies inspiring me to pursue a career as a ceramic artist. Working with clay liberated me from the collaborative process and the regiment of structured music. I was searching for a way to express my ideas without boundaries and I found it with ceramics.

Drawn to the spirit of experimentation and nonconformity that characterizes art and artist in California, I moved to San Francisco where I became exposed to a broad spectrum of ceramic sculpture in the region. I was especially inspired by the work of California ceramicist Robert Arneson. I studied with several well known ceramic artists in the San Francisco area including clay and bronze sculptor Steven DeStabler. In 1996 I began teaching ceramics courses at various institutions and I'm currently working as an Assistant Professor in the ceramics area at San Francisco State University. While my main creative focus is on ceramics, I still continue to make music. I founded several rock bands in the 1990s performing weekly shows for audiences on the local club circuit.

As a way of documenting occurrences significant to my development as an artist, I Work in the narrative with the use of metaphor in attempts to reinterpret life experience into sculpture. My process of working with clay can be described as fluid and spontaneous. Inspired by childhood memories, dreams, imagination and music, the originality of each sculpture stems from an improvisational approach. The forms emerge from a swift process of modeling the clay allowing the natural qualities of the material to guide the composition. The true potential of this method of working is realized when I have successfully integrated ideas with chance discovery.

My work often includes images of dogs. In art the use of dog imagery is part of a long and enduring tradition throughout the world that has characterized the animal for their many symbolic and formal qualities. The affinity I have for dogs stems from a lifelong fascination with their expressiveness, intelligence and sensitivity. In studying the dog, my aim is to develop a better understanding of the connection between our society and the natural world. For as long as we have co-existed with animals, dogs have provided us with a close link to nature. They are the most expressive of the corollary emotions and needs of humans and animals because they have adapted an intuitive communication between our two disparate worlds.

The work "Block Island Hangout" pays homage to the dog's role in our society to function as a guardian and protector of people and places that are important to us. The nautical charts and mapping lines on the piece reference sailing destinations to historic safe harbors significant to many experiences gained in my formative years living close to the shore on the New England coast.