To capture beauty, you need to play in the mud. It’s fun!
I grew up next to the Warren Dunes on Lake Michigan, building sandcastles on the beach and shaping the mud that washed across the dirt roads after the
rain. It’s essentially the same material I work in now.
My father was an inventor and photographer; Mom was also a photographer and President of Chicago Models association. My stepfather Paul Ireland also an inventor with his PhD in physics he built motion picture printing and processing equipment. He also started a film Lab, Lakeside Laboratory where I worked and ended up running for him.
From Film to Form
My path to sculpt
ure ran through other lives first. I managed a motion-picture laboratory, owned a photographic studio, I was a Hollywood talent manager and a marketing director. Each one taught me to see. But it wasn’t until I started using my hands that the vision cleared.
In 2001 I was marketing director at a Las Vegas limousine company when 9-11 brought the city to a standstill. I began sculpting full time — first casting performers from Cirque du Soleil’s “O,” then ballet dancers, showgirls, and a range of celebrities and actors. What began as functional art — lamps and tables — quickly became fine art: figurative work in glass, metal, ceramics, and mirror tile. The commissions came in, the galleries wanted the work, and I realized I needed to design my own equipment to produce these.
Where will life take you?
Osmosis helps but your eyes will deceive you… when you start using your hands your vision will clear. It was a profound awakening. Once you’ve learned to bend light — to watch coastal sunlight pass through kiln-formed glass — perception changes.
My work is an ongoing conversation with those who came before, with beauty, with the human form. You never really know where life will take you
An Ocean of possibilities
In 2007 I set up a production studio on the beach in Rosarito, Mexico, near the old Titanic film set, I met Aldo Santini. The Mexican drug war was just igniting, and there was gunfire most nights while I worked outdoors. I kept going. Over the years there I custom-designed and built the equipment that lets me reproduce life-sized figurative sculpture in glass, metal, and ceramics.
20 years later… I traveled a bit. Colombia became my second home. Still ending up back in Las Vegas. Doing art shows in SoCal, Clubs and Casinos. Getting ready for the next adventure. Colombia or Mexico?
