"Seeing people interact with the art fulfilled both the creative spirit and the need to share the art"
How do you describe your Craft?
I am an artist who has gone from being what I thought was a creator to being a translator using any and all materials that will assist me in that endeavor. I generally start my research, experimentation, and reflection in two dimensions (drawing). This is how I have a conversation as to what materials I will use to speak with. Most of these explorations end up in three dimensions. My primary focus was in bronze casting for the past 45 years. I built my own foundry and ran it for 25 years until 2015 when my wife and I sold our place in Enumclaw, WA and moved to Diamond Point in Sequim.
DESCRIBE ONE OF YOUR FAVORITE MOMENTS AS AN ARTIST.
I can not pick just one, just like I cannot just pick one work that I have made that is my favorite, so I will say that at age 74 I feel that I have had a full life as an artist and that life continues right up to this moment. With that said, I would like to mention the Interactive Light Show I created this past March for the Sequim Sunshine Festival. I got great pleasure in exploring the use of light as my primary medium and seeing people interact with the art fulfilled both the creative spirit and the need to share the work.
What inspires or Motivates your work currently?
Working with light by using reflection, absorption, and transmission as a way to
manipulate it.
WHAT ARTISTS OR PEOPLE HAVE INFLUENCED YOUR PRACTICE?
My wife who is an artist has been the biggest influence as neither of us can say “no” to any idea we may come up with.
At this MOment with COVID-19, how can the arts help?
I see it in this way: When I was teaching drawing at Bellevue College I was trying to get students to draw a coffee cup in perspective. Seeing the ellipse of the cylinder for some was very hard and would draw the cup with a circle on the top and a straight line for the bottom of the cup. I remembered for me I never had that problem in seeing. What I realized was that for those students their brain was seeing the cup in practical terms. The brain told the eye what it was looking at. A round opening with a flat bottom. Where as my eye informed my brain, what is was looking at, the cylinder in perspective, the ellipse. Artists see, feel, and hear the world with all of their senses and then translate the experience without being influenced by the practical override of the brain. I guess I could just use the cliché “thinking outside the box,” but sometimes you just have to reinvent the box.
how has this situation hit your craft and how can we help YOU?
In the sharing of my art. The “stay at home order” means that I get to stay in my studio and continue to work, so I am fine in that regard. I think the CAAC and new Arts Coordinator are exploring the “sharing” through this blog and TV monitors at the Civic Center.
POst COVID-19, what do you hope changes in Sequim ? what role do you think the arts might play to support our Sequim?
From my perspective the Arts in Sequim are evolving as the City and the CAAC look to partner with other Arts organizations to expand the citizens opportunity to be exposed to all of the local and regional talent through a variety of venues and formats.