As an artist it is impossible to escape one’s origin and identity. I think most of us struggle with that one way or another, at some point in our development. As I’ve grown older I’ve gained a lot of peace from letting go of the things that “should have” or “could have” been; accepting who I am, and finally embracing it. For me this has been all about reconciling the apparent conflict between aspects of my life, and learning to see the harmony that can exist amid what at first glance seems to be a patchwork of contradiction.

My young childhood was defined by my dad’s immersion in the great labor of his doctoral dissertation in medieval studies. We lived in downtown Colorado Springs and he taught at Colorado College while pursuing his PhD. Home was a rented bottom floor of a large, slightly rundown victorian era house, that had been partitioned into various apartments. Next door sprawled an overgrown empty lot, probably about an acre, which we ranged freely. So even in an urban setting my siblings and I spent a lot of time outside. Both my parents are creative, intelligent people who love beauty, aesthetic, history, and literature. My mother schooled us during the day, at which she did an excellent job, and afternoons we stayed busy the way enthusiastic kids do. Every night we gathered in the living room, and my parents took turns reading aloud to us while we drew, played with legos, clay, or whatever else. I didn’t know what a gift that was at the time. Since then I’ve realized that those countless hours of absorbing stories and language, while my hands stayed busy, would become the foundation of my creative life. Landscapes stretched out toward distant horizons, myths and conquests unfolded, and beloved characters become as present to me as real people in my life. Ideas flowed and coalesced and we experienced wonder.

Although steeped in art and literature and the exercises of the mind, we were not strangers to the physical world and hard work. My family on both sides came from the Midwest, and settled in Colorado a couple of generations before me. Hard work was a value and a practice for us, and was hugely important for me specifically. I wasn’t as academically inclined as some of my siblings, and didn’t have much knack for social situations. I’ve always been wired a little funny. But hard work gave me a way to test myself and prove my worth. It was one of the key ways I earned respect from my dad. We helped my mom garden, did chores around the house, and raised hogs with friends on their land outside town, slaughtering every fall. Those were good times.

My teens were hard years though, and we had moved a couple of times, leaving that beautiful old house, and I went to public school for the first time in high school. It was complicated. I didn’t really understand my place in the world, and got in with a rough crowd. It's really not surprising that I ended up falling into a hard-drinking-blue-collar scene as I got older. I've worked factories, meat processing, landscaping, property maintenance, construction… and I was good at it. I’m good with my hands and a hard worker. But I felt something missing. I was born and raised to create, to be a craftsman and artist. Although that desire always remained, and always expressed itself in some ways, it didn’t come to anything of note in my 20s.

When I finally got my life better handled, and reconnected with my artistic talents, the obscure art of stone carving is what captivated me. I love everything about it, and took to it with energy and drive that’s hard to describe. I carved granite statuary without even the basic tools, and imposed my will and vision upon stones that would intimate even veteran carvers. I just didn’t know any better. Those early sculptures stand in my memory as almost mystical experiences, and I will never leave the path they set me on.

However, even though I was doing great work, I struggled with insecurity over “the wasted years,” and my self-perception as an outsider in the well-groomed and sophisticated world of fine art. I felt like Frankenstein’s monster: parted together from here and there, with no coherent identity.

That feeling of self-contradiction and exclusion still plagues me from time to time, but an important truth has asserted itself over and over through my experience as artist. That truth is this: that the self doubt, and the feeling that I have no place, is total bullshit. The journey of being an artist is a coherent one that distills meaning out of confusion and brings harmony to chaos, at least when it is lived with determination and awareness. The dichotomies in my life that seemed so insurmountable, now seem like obvious parings that could not have been chosen better for this task. The intellectual and the laborer are both facets of a stone carver. It is hard, physical work, done with tools and exertion. It is also the telling of stories, and the pursuit of beauty and form. The social outcast and the conversationalist both have their place in my practice. Isolation becomes the soil for new creation, and dialogue is inherent to the spirit of art as the chronicle of human experience.

When I look back now, at least on my good days (the majority I would say,) the “wasted years” have become necessary training that taught me to work hard and to connect with people of all walks. The inner turmoil and bend toward self-destruction have become an engine out of which emerges order. My practice allows me to make sense of inner chaos and honor pain. Grief, toil and fear are met by beauty, truth, dignity, and love. It's like dreaming. My mind and body make sense of the human condition through physical forms and ideas, telling a story that is bigger than my own. And as I walk this road, resentment and regret turn to fondness and gratitude. Fear becomes hope. My work ethic keeps me always pushing, and ensures that the pieces I create are imbued with true value.

Therefore, I have found that I MUST be an artist. It is the hard work of it that brings meaning to my life, and as I shape the stones I shape myself. By committing to my art I have committed to becoming art. It all flows from the position of saying “yes” to my life, to my identity, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. Thank you for being a part of the journey, and for reading until the end.

Much love.