Statement
I was born in 1949 in Cleveland Ohio. My Father was a career United States Army Officer in the Corps of Engineers, and my family lived in Morocco, Italy, Thailand, Louisiana, Illinois, New York, Illinois again, and four times in Cleveland. My friendships didn't last long because my family moved so much.
I graduated with a MFA from the University of Wisconsin in 1976, and arrived in New York City to live and work as an artist in 1978. While building my loft, my oldest and best friend, came over and was not doing well psychologically. I talked to him, went to his apartment twice that week, and made arrangements for him to go back to his parents in Cleveland. The following week he committed suicide. I identified his body at the city morgue, and was present when his family came to collect his things. A few weeks later I broke up with my girlfriend and moved out of the loft we had just built.
The following year my mother committed suicide.
I fell apart, I quit my job, and checked myself into a mental hospital. I stayed 3 months, got out and went back in for another 2 months. I was not doing well. I heard thoughts that I didn't believe were my own. I was enrolled in several day centers therapy treatment programs and went to them daily for five years. I was put on psychiatric medications, got Disability, SSI, Medicare, Medicaid, and Food Stamps. My depression continues as does my thought disorders, though I have greatly improved. I am in weekly therapy, and monthly medication maintenance with a psychiatrist.
In 1991 my dad was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. I went to Cleveland for a year to be by his side and help him. A month after returning to NYC I was hit by an out of control taxicab while I was a pedestrian. The driver was drunk and had been arrested twice that year for drunk driving. I had to have five surgeries on my leg, was in a wheelchair for two years and on crutches for twelve years. I now walk with a cane.
Presently I am working two days a week as the Assistant Director of the artist-run gallery The Painting Center through a disability program with the Social Security Administration.
What motivates me is to make my art. Today, my mother and friends' death help me to see the glass as half full. With my work I focus on the history of abstract art and the drama of life and death as it is expressed through abstract painting. I make outdoor raw canvas thread and raw linen canvas thread, and dust pieces, inspired by Lucio Fontana and Piero Manzoni's super reductive paintings of the 1950's and early 60's. I document my work with photography. My work is temporary in nature, like the people I love.
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