ARTIST’S STATEMENT
THE HUMAN CONDITION
We strut, we fume, we signify nothing; sound and fury is smothered in folly and tedium. We have the brains of Ardi and Lucy and fingers that launch nuclear bombs with the press of a button. We are spun from a helical lottery; our patchwork of genes sprayed randomly in time and space. We gloss over the profound mystery of existence with the shallow mystery of a god who erratically smites and caresses, who composes absurd riddles but answers no questions, but who has the power to generate exquisite spiritual sensations and acts of social goodness in equal measure with doctrinal bickering, social divisiveness and holy war. If there are any miracles they would be the enlightenment with its brilliant system of laws and the rights of man, modern science that has soothed much of what is brutal and painful in life, and capitalism which has for millions eliminated material need. Flawed miracles of course, they are all man made.
My figures do not originate in perception but in the mind; they are archetypes, projections of inner life played against the background of myth and religion. My figures are naked because they deal in innate human nature, not culture, which is an ephemeral construct. The naked body is our biological inheritance; apparel is the superficial layer that signifies status, nationality group identity and environmental conditions.
As an art student in the 1960’s, I absorbed abstract expressionism, minimalism and the anti-form movements. Today I take an abrupt turn backwards to a figurative art laden with autobiography, psychology, narrative and myth. Beyond the thrall of technology, weary of gestural virtuosity, formal gamesmanship and naïve visual social science, I look back on my life, ruminate on the human condition, and sing songs of experience.
BIOGRAPHY
I was born in Cleveland Ohio in 1941. My father was in the loan business, but his passion was woodworking. My mother was a primary school teacher with a passion for acting. My sister, also an artist, lives in Denver Colorado. When I was eight years old, the family moved to Milwaukee.
I studied theater at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the early 60’s. In my Junior year I dated a student of dance, who introduced me to the work of Merce Cunningham, then in his prime, and John Cage. The effect was profound. After receiving a BA in theater I decided on a career in visual art and enrolled at UW-Milwaukee where I studied under mentors John Colt and Lawrence Rathsack. In 1967 I received an MFA in painting from the University of Illinois-Urbana
At the University of Illinois I met and married Barbara Apel, a fellow graduate student and printmaker. We moved to Boston where I took a teaching position at the Art Institute of Boston (now the Art Institute at Lesley University). Barbara and I rented a storefront studio in Jamaica Plain and I started doing figure sculpture, something for which I had no training because the figure was not then systematically taught in art schools.
Barbara and I divorced in 1972. I took a year off from teaching and moved to Paris (1975-76) where I studied French at the Sorbonne and wrote an art column for the Paris Metro. I met a French woman, Brigitte Boidot, who followed me to Boston, where we were married in 1977. We had a son, Julien, who is now an animator living in Brooklyn. The marriage was dissolved in 1981. During this period I added photography to my list of skills, a step toward the interdisciplinary form my work would eventually take. My photographs were acquired by the Brooklyn Museum, Danforth Museum of Art, and the Boston Athenaeum.
The 1980’s were a period of intense activity and my work synthesized several mediums: photography, performance art, copier art and artists books. I was involved in several collaborative projects: The Theater of Kinetic Sculpture (World Sculpture Racing), The Metropolitan Artists and Poets (MAAPS), and The Arts Collaborative, Inc. Major support came from the Boston Institute of Contemporary Art, Milwaukee Performing Arts Center, and the Fitchburg Art Museum. The decade was also a one of intense spiritual activity as I moved from evangelical Christianity to Yoga and Zen Buddhism. After a trip to Japan in 1997 I became a student of Daien Hifu, a Rinzai Zen priest and founder of the Wild Goose Zendo in Concord Massachusetts. In 1986 I married Elizabeth Rotter, a graphic designer, and we had a son, Nikolaus.
We currently reside in Harvard, Massachusetts. Still a professor at the Art Institute of Boston, I teach Advanced Sculpture, Interdisciplinary Studio and Art of the Western World. My wife is the principal at Studio-e Design, a firm she founded in 1996. My oldest son is an animator living in Brooklyn, and Nikolaus is a college student enrolled at Hampshire College in Amherst Massachusetts. My current work is Interdisciplinary (integrating sculpture, photography and video) and focuses on personal narratives.
RESUME
EDUCATION
- University of Illinois-Urbana, MFA, 1967
- University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, BFA, 1965
- University of Wisconsin-Madison, BA, 1963
ACADEMIC
I am a professor the Art Institute at Lesley University currently teaching Advanced Sculpture, Interdisciplinary Studio, and Art History.
ARTS MANAGEMENT
In the 1080’s Co-founded and directed two Boston based artists Groups: The Metropolitan Artists and Poets, an artist's collaborative/performance space (1984-86); and the theater of kinetic sculpture called "The World Sculpture Racing Society" (1981-88). I am currently on the Board of advisors of Contemporary Arts International (CAI) and the Santa Cruz Institute of Contemporary Art (SCICA).
SCULPTURE, PHOTOGRAPHY, INTERDISCIPLINARY WORK
My work has been shown in over 80 local, regional and national exhibitions and I have received over 20 awards and commissions. My work has received extensive coverage in the media, including a PBS Special Report on Theater of Kinetic Sculpture in 1987. My work is in the collections of the Brooklyn Museum, The Danforth Museum, Franklin Furnace Archives, the National Institute of Design, Abmedabad, India and the Fine arts Academy, in New Delhi.