In the Cottage Hospital, Santa Barbara California, I came to life. 1975. I can’t remember that far back. I do remember being sad in high school, leaving home, then hating the proposition of either work or more school. I sold everything I owned, burned what was left & walked away. 1994 to 2002 were years I spent with a backpack, town to town. Sometimes big travels, sometimes to visit friends. Eventually freight trains & Summer work in Alaska. This spawned my first sense of habit, or ritual - I remember that. Then, early winter four years later, after returning from work in Alaska, came the night that started all of this. On a particularly miserable freight train ride from Pocatello to Portland, one where the night froze hard enough for all night jumping jacks, then six hours of rain through the gorge, then into the shipyards ten miles outside Portland to sleep under a shed with hundreds of spiders and dampness and noise only to walk to town in the rainy morning - that morning I decided I would return to school, as a way out, or back in, or a new challenge, or inspiration.
Having friends and a job on a tree farm in Eugene Oregon, I returned to school there. Two years later I came to Portland State University, where I earned my Bachelors of Science in 2007.
In school I quickly fell back in love with art. I remembered not just sad in high school, but also devoting my focuses to art making. I remembered that I was supposed to apply to Art Center at age 18, to learn how to paint, but the time wasn’t right. This time in school, I studied Russian literature, theoretical physics, drawing, and painting. The later, of course, pulled at my heart the most. And so here we are years later, on the web, looking at what’s become of my art and mind and heart and hands as I etch out a humble life of carpentry and art making and the occasional world travel adventures.
