Biographical Information
I am an educator by trade -- math teacher, then principal, and now district curriculum coordinator. I have worked in rural, suburban, and urban schools with nearly every type of student and demographic. I came to teaching after stints as a tool design engineer and a fine arts student at Kendall College of Art and Design. I have presented and published academic research on the development of teachers and administrators, and taught briefly at the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts.
I am an artist and a craftsman at heart. I have been toying with sculpting for 28 years, taking it pretty seriously (while working full time) for the past 20 years. When my wife Anne and purchased our first home in Battle Creek, MI in 1998, I created a studio in the basement and that is when I started to develop as an artist. It was transformative to have a place I could leave in creative disarray, and to build a space with the feeling I needed to nurture my creativity. Now we live in rural Marshall, MI, and I have a small but adequate barn for a 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 with the help of friends and family) in the backyard whenever it is that time in the process. What a difference place, space, and resources can make!
Anne and our three children, Maddy, Liam, and Aidan, 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 am an artist and a craftsman at heart. I have been toying with sculpting for 28 years, taking it pretty seriously (while working full time) for the past 20 years. When my wife Anne and purchased our first home in Battle Creek, MI in 1998, I created a studio in the basement and that is when I started to develop as an artist. It was transformative to have a place I could leave in creative disarray, and to build a space with the feeling I needed to nurture my creativity. Now we live in rural Marshall, MI, and I have a small but adequate barn for a 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 with the help of friends and family) in the backyard whenever it is that time in the process. What a difference place, space, and resources can make!
Anne and our three children, Maddy, Liam, and Aidan, 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.
