Despite a lack of formal training,
I’ve been “studying” art since I was inspired
by the Op, Pop, Minimalist and Conceptual currents of
contemporary art while growing up in the 1960s.
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My big epiphany was seeing a retrospective
of work — in Chicago, in 1981 — by Detroit’s
Cass Corridor artists. Not coincidentally, the Cass Corridor
movement was another byway of the turbulent ’60s, and the
artists there had blazed new trails in abandoning traditional
forms and media. Their raw, energetic and uncompromising art
was largely composed of found materials such as rope, motor
oil, duct tape and scrap metal — the detritus of a
struggling Rust Belt community.
Invigorated by the work of those artists,
as well as the burgeoning DIY ethos of the punk era, I began
investigating my first mature approach to art. These first,
abstract paintings were done exclusively on recycled Kraft
paper, corrugated cardboard and oversized calendars, using
leftover house paint and half-empty spray cans. Soon
incorporating other found materials, my work took a turn toward
collage and assemblage.
From the mid-’80s until 1998, I
published the independent music magazine Option, and my art retreated
to a smaller scale and a secondary activity. I have pursued art
full-time since 2001, when my output shifted dramatically
toward developing complete bodies of work drawing on
minimalism, conceptualism, installation and process art.
Beginning with the Iris Series in
2003, I have shown work publicly via my studio gallery, also
called arts&labor. Much as the Iris Series offered
manipulations and juxtapositions of one image, organized in
regimented grids and defined by the patterns of the framing, my
Glass Jar sculptures offer similar systems of repetition, fragmentation and
containment using recycled materials and commonplace objects. The International Klexography Project of 2006 draws from many of the same
impulses while turning to a more painterly approach.
After working in Los Angeles for 25 years,
I relocated to rural Vermont in 2007, where I currently live
with two bad cats.
