Biographical Information
I am currently the principal of the Capital Area Career Center, a career and technical education high school in the Lansing area. Until recently I was also a Ph.D. student at MSU in education administration, but I decided I couldn’t spend enough time with my family, and on my art, if I continued through my dissertation. I have been an administrator in rural and urban schools for 10 years, and taught mathematics and statistics to both highly challenged and highly advanced students at several schools over eight years. I came to teaching after stints as a tool design engineer (eight years, three companies) and a fine arts student at Kendall College of Art and Design. I have also presented and published academic research on the development of teachers and administrators, and have taught mold making for sculptors at the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts.
I have been toying with sculpting for 22 years, but only taking it seriously for the past 14 years. Prior to that, my wife Anne and I had been apartment hopping from city to city (from Kalamazoo, to Miami, FL, to Madison, WI, and then to Battle Creek). In our apartments I didn’t have a place I could get and leave dirty, and this really constrained my creativity. When we purchased our home in Battle Creek, in 1998, I created a studio in the basement and that is when I started to develop as an artist. I was truly surprised at the impact of just having the right space solely dedicated to making art. Now that we live in rural Mason, I have a larger pole barn studio which makes even greater creativity and production possible. And because we live in the country, I can fire up my bronze foundry (which I designed and built myself) in the back yard whenever it is that time in the process. What a difference place, space, and resources can make!
My wife and three children have helped me understand the need for balance in my life, and the central part that art plays in that balance for me and our family.
I have been toying with sculpting for 22 years, but only taking it seriously for the past 14 years. Prior to that, my wife Anne and I had been apartment hopping from city to city (from Kalamazoo, to Miami, FL, to Madison, WI, and then to Battle Creek). In our apartments I didn’t have a place I could get and leave dirty, and this really constrained my creativity. When we purchased our home in Battle Creek, in 1998, I created a studio in the basement and that is when I started to develop as an artist. I was truly surprised at the impact of just having the right space solely dedicated to making art. Now that we live in rural Mason, I have a larger pole barn studio which makes even greater creativity and production possible. And because we live in the country, I can fire up my bronze foundry (which I designed and built myself) in the back yard whenever it is that time in the process. What a difference place, space, and resources can make!
My wife and three children have helped me understand the need for balance in my life, and the central part that art plays in that balance for me and our family.
