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“I
was born and raised in a small town in Southern
California—my favorite thing to do as a little kid was to
make clay and wax figures and have big battles with them. As
I got older, I made caricatures of whatever interested
me—cowboys, Indians, soldiers, animals, rock bands and
motorcycles. My big brother Bill had a motorcycle and we
used to drag race through the orange groves.
In 1967, after graduating from Whittier College, I traveled
around the world filling sketchbooks with people and places
I saw, and visiting art museums. Then I went to Claremont
Graduate School where I learned some excellent design
principles, but my sculpture professor ridiculed figure work
and insisted we do abstract geometric sculpture. I dropped
out and hung out with a friend in Berkeley, where I made
ceramic caricatures which he took to an art gallery. The
good news was that they sold, the bad news was that my
friend kept the money. It was time to leave again—I moved
to Tempe and was a graduate teaching assistant at Arizona
State University, which didn’t leave me enough time to
sculpt. And my lectures put the students to sleep, so I
dropped out again.
In order to learn the technical side of bronze casting, I
moved to Santa Monica and worked at Dell Weston Art Bronze
Casting. It was there that I acquired the knowledge of the
casting process which has allowed me to challenge the limits
of what I can create in bronze. Having developed a
commitment to my craft, I continue to make my own molds,
work the waxes and do the finishing work on the bronzes.
Since 1971, I have been a full-time professional sculptor. I
live with my wife Anne, a painter and musician, on the
Monterey Peninsula. Our son Devon has moved back to Southern
California where he rides his Harley. He urged me to get
back to sculpting motorcycles, something I had wanted to do
for a long time.”
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