flashforward...

i got together with the love of my life in the summer of 99. that same summer i did my first real work in clay. belle & sebastian played a lot in the ceramics studio at camp. so did ben harper.

i was just learning how to work with clay, but i was definitely into it. the staff at camp, mainly nicole and tracy, and kevin, taught me and collaborated with me a lot. it was an incredible learning experience.

when carrie and i got to san diego, i started making these slump forms that i painted with acrylics. carrie kept saying, "why don't you just glaze them?"

it wasn't until i got the job at the elementary school that i actually heeded her very wise advise. then i got rolling with wheel thrown and slab built pieces.

it was at this point that the pattern impulse in me came back loud and strong. the strongest it has been since those pieces in the mid 90s. i loved so many of the pieces that i made in the few years i invested in clay. so little of them sold, though, and i became disenchanted in the medium. that said, this coincided with me going back to school to get my teaching credential.

all in all, though, these functional pattern pieces i made in clay are some of the most beautiful works i have ever made.

unbroken chain.

i think that was playing a lot while i was working on the thesis body of work. things got darker my last year in baton rouge. different forces pulling at me. uncertainty ahead.

what's a job?

that said, i worked a lot. moved into my own place after jerome graduated. a one bedroom apartment. i used the bedroom as my studio. all charcoal all the time...

the work reflected the uncertainty of the (my) future. i watched the talking heads movie, true stories, more than a few times.

in the beginning

a boy's dream

golden calf- the creation

my thesis paper was really a bunch of bullshit. in hindsight, the body of work centered on my insecurities as a young man heading out into the real world, finally not being supported by the realm of academia.

i would move on from this dark body of work after spending the summer 'teaching" at a summer camp. some of the fun would come back into my work. and stay there.

when the heat rose...

I discovered something "cool". It was early spring when I got in a groove on this series of drawings and it was still cold in the mornings. I would crank up the heater and start to color. The extra warmth in the house made the crayons give a little. Like drawing with sticks of butter. I loved this. It made it so much easier to get the crayons to fill shapes in solidly.

sea worthy

high maintenance

These drawings would get put aside later in the summer as I started to investigate what was happening in the portals.

While working on these drawings, cds by Roy Ayers were in heavy rotation. Everybody Loves the Sunshine and Mystic Voyage. A bit of Grant Green was in the mix too.

back in the day...

the year was 1996. 2nd year in grad school in baton rouge. living with jerome in a beatdown house across the street from a mcdonalds. i had 2 studios on campus, but i was starting to go to them less and less. choosing instead to work at the house. we had a big sheet of masonite screwed into the living room wall that served as a drawing board. it was here that i started to get the most out of a box of crayons. i created a series of drawings that culminated in the piece below. working with hand drawn patterns and images from suburbia. these works were the most rigid pattern based pieces i have made, but patterns still are a large part of the work i make... when i actually sit down to make it.