Biography & Notes
I am a Washington, DC native. Our house was full of early american antiques, of all kinds, that my parents collected. My mother was a teacher and artist, her father a carpenter. As a pre-schooler we often visited museums: the National Gallery of Art, the Corcoran Museum or the Phillips Collection museum. My father was an advertising account executive, his father, I learned much too late, had been an ornamental iron worker. On Saturdays I went along to the agency offices where my father left me in the art department while he proof read his ad copy. In those days commercial art departments had dozens of artists working at their drafting tables. They set me up with paper, pencils and paints to keep me occupied.
I attended the Capitol Page High school. After classes I worked as one of the two head pages (one on each side of the aisle) in the U.S. Senate. I’m surely the only page school grad to go to art school. My art school training began in painting and then sculpture at (RISD) the Rhode Island School of Design, BFA, followed by the Yale University School of Art & Architecture, MFA. I am Emeritus Professor of Art, Georgetown University, where I taught Sculpture and Foundation Design in the Art & Art History Department. In July, 2015, I moved from Washington, DC, to San Luis Obispo, CA. I am a sculptor/painter. I mostly work with steel and wood and I have also cast my sculpture in bronze. My aesthetic is idiosyncratic. I think my graphic sensibility dominates my work. The common thread is a synergism between two and three dimensions and color. I use elements from nature. I alter, distort and abstract shapes to emphasize their essential character. I admire and share the sensibilities of many modern masters. Mondrian for composition and simple color. Klee and Kandinsky for wedding geometry and nature. Noguchi for purity of form and sensual materials, Giacometti for mystery and monumentality and David Smith for toughness. I’ve coined my work “lyrical constructivism”. I’ve exhibited my work in museums and many art galleries throughout the United States, including: the Phillips Collection and the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, DC, the Albright-Knox Museum, Buffalo, NY. I’ve had solo exhibitions at the Huntington Museum, Huntington, WV, and the Southeast Center for Contemporary Art (SECCA) in Winston Salem, NC. In art galleries: the Touchstone Gallery, the Ruth Siegel Gallery, the David Findley Galleries and the Walter Wickiser Gallery in New York, NY. Also the Zolla-Lieberman Gallery, Chicago, IL, the Koplin Gallery in Los Angeles & Santa Monica, CA, and the Agra Gallery, the Henri Gallery, the Baumgartner Gallery, the Anton Gallery and the Cross-MacKenzie Gallery in Washington, DC. My honors include a (NEA) National Endowment for the Arts, Visual Arts Fellowship Grant. I am currently is represented by Green Chalk Contemporary, Monterey CA.
