I’ve been making art most of my life. Growing up in the SHADOWS of THE BOMB, the electrocution of the Rosenbergs, the Payola scandals, VIETNAM , the JFK hit, the suicide of Marylin and the MLK and RFK assassinations embued me with a philosophy of ANARCHIC and benevolent CYNICISM. After a FALSE START at college I brilliantly DODGED THE military DRAFT by enlisting in the Army at age 18 (the Air National Guard was NOT AN OPTION for ordinary folk.) That stroke of GENIUS opened the door to the next phase of my education… at Fort Gordon, GA where I learned such esoterica as the vertical butt stroke, several “come alongs,” and how to peel potatoes the army way. After 3 years of touring Southeast Asia (courtesy of Uncle Sam and dressed like a pickle) I returned to San Jose and enrolled in college on the GI Bill. This time I was more successful, having matured enough to recognize a GOOD DEAL when I saw it. I earned BFA and MA degrees at San José State University with the intent of one day teaching college art. During the next twelve years working as a graphic designer, drafter, illustrator, furniture mover, gas station attendant, photographer, itinerant artist and adult ed teacher I figured out that the art world had changed, and that it was necessary to have a TERMINAL degree in order to be taken SERIOUSLY as an artist. I attended the University of Nevada at Las Vegas for my MFA, afterwards settling into 7 more years as a “Road Scholar” (driving from town to town teaching part time at many different colleges) and an Artist-in-residence in Nevada . When the NEW CENTURY yawned I landed the coveted TENURE TRACK POSITION at a small community college near the MEXICAN BORDER, where I now live, teaching art, MAKING THINGS that are presented as ART, hanging out with 2 cats and a dog, writing, reading mystery novels and an occasional book on art theory, biography or philosophy, tending a ragged garden, listening to music, studying Spanish, playing guitar (poorly,) and trying not to obsess too much over the STATE OF THE WORLD: continued degradation of the earth, WARS built on fallible convictions, rampant RELIGIOSITY, national CHAUVANISM, the CULTS of violence, intolerance, indifference, greed and ignorance, and , oh yeah….

THE BOMB.