biography

I still bear the scars of that explosion 40 years later. A sappy pinon log erupted just as I bent to retrieve my foil-wrapped potato from the glowing embers of our campfire on Jacob’s Ladder, outside Grand Junction, Colorado. A couple of hot coals lodged between my coat collar and neck, where they danced and sizzled for an eternity. It was early spring nearly 40 years ago when Walt and I chose that site to park our Cushman motor-scooters (remember those? Shriners used to ride em in parades, wearing their fez, maybe still do).We were doing something completely normal for 14 year old boys in those days: ride our Cushmans out of town, up into the mesa country, then off across the desert to camp for the weekend. At this time Highway 6 was the main route from Grand Junction to Denver. Parts of it were still gravel. Interstate 70 was barely a gleam in Eisenhower’s eye.

If we tried that today, we’d be violating numerous federal and state laws, and there’d be someone close enough to report us, assault us, or arrest us. These new regulations are probably necessary. There are just too many of us. Because of our own proliferation, this level of control is necessary, if not insufficient. This relates to Wildlife Art in the sense that artists my age and older are probably the last to have had almost unfettered access to the American wilderness.

We grew up steeped in outdoor survival, wandering the deserts and mountains like today’s children wander a city park. Actually, no sane parent would allow a child to wander a city park unsupervised today. But we camped, fished, hunted, and absorbed the wild as if it were the very air. My sculpture is the symbolic creation of a modern man with primitive experience. It is an attempt to make my experience of the American wilderness accessible to anyone viewing this artwork. It is also my attempt to reconcile what was, what is, and what will be.

Traveling recently across the western United States, I stopped sat at a cliff edge, overlooking a dry river. I imagined an old man, gazing across the sere, grassy plain that stretches endlessly eastward. If you were able to see him, you would notice his empty unfocussed eyes. He is looking far away, seeing a dust plume growing. Forms emerge. Great shaggy bison, moving toward the river below. As they lower their heads to drink, reflections confuse the image.

They are but a GHOST AT THE RIVER.

A wrenching twist. People are gathered at the rivers edge, the bison a shape, a memory, blurred by time, behind them.

The river is gone. Its passage through the centuries etched in arroyo walls. Reflections preserved in sedimentary layers, become more precious as they age.

There are images hidden between these lines, just as they are hidden within the sculpture. There are images hidden throughout this essay. I allow my unconscious awareness of symbols to influence their spontaneous appearance in an evolving sculpture as well. This is a little like mindful dreaming, where the sleeper is an observer as the dream unfolds; but whether a participant or not, exercises no control. The only difference is that I direct the reality and texture of the shapes accreting before me. When I began the GHOST sculpture, I had no idea there were going to be people in it. It was simply a herd of Bison. This is the essence of the idea that mythology, poetry, and art are humanity's attempt to describe the ultimate mysteries of life, which are beyond our ability to consciously comprehend. Joseph Campbell once said that the “best things can't be told, they transcend thought. The second best are misunderstood because they are the thoughts referring to that which can't be talked about. The third best are what we talk about.” Hence the appeal of visual arts, poetry, literature, and music: they excite an emotional response, or a memory that transcends words.