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I was born in 1948 in Cedar Falls, Iowa. After studying a wide range of subjects (but especially mathematics and art) at the University of Iowa, I received a BFA from there in 1970. (Student at Brussels’ L’Academie Royale des Beaux Arts, and assistant to Belgian sculptor Olivier Strebelle, 1969-70.)
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In December of 1971, after wandering through Mexico and the western U.S., I arrived in Astoria, Oregon, and immediately decided that that was where I wanted to be. I worked at first as a laborer, a carpenter, and a commercial fisherman. After several years I was able to buy an abandoned fishermen’s bunkhouse on the banks of the Columbia River, in Astoria’s east end, which I converted into a residence and studio. I lived, studied, and worked there until the structure was destroyed by fire in 2001.
I supported myself financially by working in the construction trades, making sculpture as time allowed. I occasionally exhibited my work (two galleries in Astoria, and the School of Arts and Crafts in Portland.) I taught myself structural analysis and machinery design, and, increasingly, worked at the drawing table rather than in the field. In 1980, Strebelle asked me to help him with a project for Belgium’s 150th anniversary of nationhood. For that water-borne parade, I designed and supervised the construction of the armature of a forty-five-foot long horse carrying three riders-- a construction of steel tubing, clothed in Dacron panels, that folded itself into the much smaller hold of a canal barge. For a Seattle company that manufactured weighing-scales that were immune to the influences of a tossing sea, I created two versions of what I called “Ocean Motion Simulators.” For Natural Biopolymer in South Bend, Washington, I designed a three-story processing tower. Always, my main interest was in movement.
Living by the river for forty years made me acutely aware of its rhythms: the rise and fall of the tides, the ships turning at anchor, the cormorants’ perch atop old pilings disappearing and reappearing. I continue to look for ways to express this dynamism sculpturally. The Luna Phaser project does this, exactly.
I supported myself financially by working in the construction trades, making sculpture as time allowed. I occasionally exhibited my work (two galleries in Astoria, and the School of Arts and Crafts in Portland.) I taught myself structural analysis and machinery design, and, increasingly, worked at the drawing table rather than in the field. In 1980, Strebelle asked me to help him with a project for Belgium’s 150th anniversary of nationhood. For that water-borne parade, I designed and supervised the construction of the armature of a forty-five-foot long horse carrying three riders-- a construction of steel tubing, clothed in Dacron panels, that folded itself into the much smaller hold of a canal barge. For a Seattle company that manufactured weighing-scales that were immune to the influences of a tossing sea, I created two versions of what I called “Ocean Motion Simulators.” For Natural Biopolymer in South Bend, Washington, I designed a three-story processing tower. Always, my main interest was in movement.
Living by the river for forty years made me acutely aware of its rhythms: the rise and fall of the tides, the ships turning at anchor, the cormorants’ perch atop old pilings disappearing and reappearing. I continue to look for ways to express this dynamism sculpturally. The Luna Phaser project does this, exactly.
