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Featured Artist:
A Moment's Reflection I'm past 50, but still think that I'm too young to spend much time trying to assess my place or worth as an artist (although my aging body reminds me that we all face a limitation on years we have to accomplish what we hope to do with our lives!) Critics, historians, and biographers have that task of trying to make sense of one's accomplishments. I can tell you that I've enjoyed making art from the time that I was in the third grade. I'm sure it was a conspiracy hatched between my teacher and my parents to get me involved in painting and drawing to keep me occupied upon finishing class work so that I wouldn't disrupt my classmates in their work. My mother bought me a set of oil paints that cost $7.00 in the days when we had very, very little, and then bought my first painting for $1.50! Imagine my father a homesteader and my mother a homemaker for a family of seven and the task they had to just eke out a living from arid ground. Then try to imagine how they found the love and faith to support a son interested in something as esoteric as art! But they, in that moment, tremendously influenced my future direction and motivation to further pursue the arts. My father was instrumental in showing me the skills necessary to build, create, construct Can you imagine turning a young kid loose in your well-organized shop, and letting him build, break, lose tools, and in general create a mess? How much I owe him for where I am! High school was difficult for me, not necessarily the academics, but the feeling of belonging. I am sure that many people of high school age have experienced similar feelings, probably throughout all of history. Being from a homestead 12 miles outside of town, I couldn't spend any time after school hanging around with buddies. So I suppose I became somewhat of a "loner," spending what precious little free time I had from tasks around the farm, wandering in the foothills of the Absaroka Mountains. Hunting, looking for fossils and arrowheads, and generally just immersing myself in the beauty of my surroundings was the perfect freedom for a farm boy, freedom from the fatherly dictates of work to be done, or haranguing from my four brothers. I learned to see, and I also learned the importance of embracing "aloneness," which is a grace and quite the opposite of "loneliness." Perhaps it is "aloneness" that gives rise to the desire to create. Upon completing a new painting or sculpture, I soon learned how people were genuinely affected and/or impressed with my work and how that gave me a sense of acceptance, or belonging, a reason for being. After finishing a four-year degree at Gonzaga University, and then a fifth year doing work for my teaching credentials I found myself teaching art at St. George's School. I loved teaching, but would also stay up until early morning hours doing painting in my own studio, burning the candle at both ends. It became clear that I would have to choose one career over the other. I returned to school this time to the University of Idaho, looking for time and support in developing myself as a studio artist and did obtain my Masters of Fine Arts. Today I enjoy a bit of both worlds. I teach one class each quarter at SFCC because of the incredible hope for the future I feel when working with students sincere about learning about the artist within themselves. But for the majority of my time (when I'm not working on my new studio), I make mostly sculptures and paintings for public places to fulfill that desire in me to create something original with the best craftsmanship of which I am capable. That provides fulfillment and income as well as keeping my studio open and stocked with materials. Then sometimes I also actually take time to make something that is solely a product of my own whimsy, unencumbered by a client or commission. At that time I again feel the freedom of spirit and joy that led me into the world of making art. |
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