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b i o

I was born in McAlester, Oklahoma in 1945. I graduated from high school there in 1963. I was the guy who won all the art contests (except those won by a girl named Vicky who was a year older than me but I was unopposed when she graduated and left town.) I attended college as an art major for one year at Eastern Oklahoma ( then A&M ) in Wilburton, Oklahoma. After that, in quick succession I was married, divorced, and drafted. I spent two years in Germany where I traveled extensively and became interested in photography. I started riding and racing motorcycles shortly after my return home. This led to a series of sales jobs in motorcycle shops in Tulsa, Oklahoma to support my racing habit.

After getting burned out on that or just wearing out my welcome at all the shops I wanted to work for I took a job at a place called Blake Enterprises that built speed parts for motorcycles. Bill Blake who owned the place was someone I had worked for briefly before going to Tulsa. He is the person who taught me the skills I use in this project as well as how to look at something and understand the entire system instead of seeing it as a series of individual parts. We never got along particularly well because he is at least as hard headed as I am but he has the distinction of being the only person I ever worked for who is obviously smarter than I am.

That job finally went by the wayside mostly because I was married again, adding more mouths to feed periodically and just basically needing a job with advancement potential. We moved to Corpus Christi, Texas in 1975 where I wound up working in the oilfield as a boat captain in the Gulf of Mexico out of Port Aransas, Texas. I worked around the gulf coast and along the Mexican border and all over South Texas for the next 29 years. I renewed my love affair with photography in about 1980 or so and sold a few photos as well as some pencil drawings of wildlife in local galleries. I never really had time for that and it just kind of faded away to the back burner awaiting the extra time of retirement. I live alone in Alice, Texas and with the kids and ex gone I started noticing I sometimes had extra time, most of which I used playing with my motorcycles. I started this sculpture project mostly to research what it would take to do it as a bridge to retirement. It took on a life of it's own as most of my projects do. I never do anything half assed. It seems like I spent more time trying to make contacts and set up the infrastructure needed to do this as a business than on art work. This was supposed to be a several year transition period but circumstances caused mostly by myself have moved up the timetable considerably. I've had a very interesting life so far but that missing art component has left a gap that begs to be filled. This time I'm in for the duration. The picky details are done and now I can devote the rest of my life to the art that I love. I hope at least a few others will enjoy my work even a fraction as much as I enjoy doing it.