Reviving my career has taken me on a wild ride, including a call to Hollywood, short-lived and becoming a board member of the Artship, a renovated ship of war that became a seaborne arts venue in Oakland that was discontinued in 2004. My first internet sale in 1997 was to a person from South Africa and one of the most recent to a Swedish representative of the Carnaval, a huge and sprawling, even global celebration that deals intensively with the peoples of the African Diaspora. For the 2004 Carnaval in San Francisco my bleach rendering of ‘Califia, Queen of California’ was chosen as the poster cover for that event. I have since been shown and honored in various schools and colleges such as Stanford, UCLA, Sonoma State and Santa Rosa JC and a much longer and growing list. The introduction of bleach into my art has been a huge catalyst and I find enough nuances in using it to take me the rest of the way.
I was born in Little Rock Arkansas in 1940. Three years later, during the Second World War, the family moved to Seattle where my father found defense work at Boeing Aircraft Company. Joining the U.S. Air Force after graduating from high school I spent three years in Japan, a country that impressed me then as it continues to do even after all these years. After discharge I attended Central Washington State College in Ellensburg for a year then moved to the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Area in October 1964. I am the father of four children, three robust young males and a lady.
My first writings were published in the early seventies and my art sold well initially but after nearly a 20 year hiatus I revived my art career in 1994.
