I was born on November 29, 1968 in a small suburb just east of Cleveland, Ohio. The middle child of five, in a middle class family, living in middle America. My father was a draftsman and as a child I developed a love of drawing. I would copy comics with my grandfather and draw anything and everything I could. As long as I can remember I have always wanted to be an artist of some kind. Throughout grade school and into high school I concentrated on art classes.
My parents divorced when I was eight and as a result, my family (kids and mom) moved around a lot. We moved up and down the east coast of the US. From Ohio to Atlanta, Georgia, then back to Ohio, on to Huntsville, Alabama, then to middle of nowhere Tennessee, back again to Ohio, and finally settled in Northern Virginia outside of Washington, DC. All in all, between my third and tenth grades we moved at least 10 times. From this constant moving, I developed a love of travel and experiencing new locales and as a result it is my ambition to see as much of the world as possible while here on earth. I also have a strong curiosity and interest in other cultures as well as a love of nature.
I spent most of my childhood outdoors exploring my environment. This was before the Internet, when learning was more based on experiencing the real world. I was, and still am, a dreamer and comfortable going off on my own creating my own little worlds and adventures. I am a listener and observer, more than a talker, but I do enjoy meeting new people and new experiences. I view my work as a record of my travels and memories, often enhanced to create my own little worlds.
In high school I excelled in art and math and planned to major in architecture in college, which seemed to me to be a good combination of my two favorite disciplines. I attended the Virginia Polytechnic Institute (Virginia Tech) with that intention, but was drawn to art classes (drawing, painting and sculpture) and shifted to major in art. I graduated with a BA in Art, with a concentration in Graphic Design.
Throughout high school I always had cameras that I played with as a way of capturing moments or memories more than as a way of creating art. At Tech, I took a photography class, and for the first time, started seeing the camera as a tool to create art. Also, computers were just starting to be used in art/graphic design classes and I was introduced to a new program just released called Photoshop. I was hooked. I played around for hours with its vast capabilities to manipulate and enhance photos to create art. While I still drew and doodled, photography was becoming my main creative outlet.
Right out of college I took a job as a staff assistant at a Congressional Subcommittee in Washington, DC. It was meant to be a temp job to hold me over until I found a Graphic Design job, however, I ended up really enjoying the job and stayed for almost 3 years, eventually becoming a legislative analyst. I became friends with a staff member who is a quadriplegic, and we had a mutual love of travel, music and the outdoors and started taking trips together.
We found a company (Wilderness Inquiry) that offered outdoor adventure trips all over the US that catered to people with disabilities. We did canoeing or kayaking trips in the Everglades, the Apostle Islands in Lake Superior, the Junior Lakes in Maine, the Green River in Utah, the San Juan Islands in Puget Sound, and the Missouri River in Montana. We drove to each of these locations making a road trip out of it as well. Of course, I had a camera with me documenting all our adventures, taking hundreds of pictures per trip. Being the days of film photography one had to be more selective about what to shoot or not shoot as it was cost prohibitive. If I had a digital camera then, the number of pictures I took would have been in the thousands as I tried to capture the awe inspiring landscapes we encountered.
When the Congress flipped in the 1994 elections, I took it as a sign and opportunity to try something new. In January of 1995 a couple of friends and I decided to do the ultimate road-trip. We would take a month to drive across the US to Mexico and back. I bought a new camera, packed up a rental car and without much planning we headed out for the great wild west. It would end up being one of those life altering decisions.
A friend and I left Virginia and drove to Louisiana to pick up another friend. After a night on the town in New Orleans, we hit the road. With three of us taking turns driving, we were able to go great distances in short intervals. We drove across Texas in one night and then camped at the Guadalupe Mountains and hiked up to the highest point in Texas. We then drove on to New Mexico and camped outside of the Carlsbad Caverns for a few days and then on to Albuquerque, Santa Fe and Jimenez Springs. We headed into Arizona stopping at the Petrified Forest, Flagstaff and into Phoenix. Here we met up with another friend from high school who suggested we do a day trip up to Sedona.
It was a beautiful sunny day as we hiked through the awesome Sedona landscape. While hiking, we came across a shelter cave, where we stopped for a rest. A friend of mine had recently come back from a trip to South America and brought back yopo, a potent psychedelic snuff created from dried and ground seeds used by shaman and South Americans for thousands of years. He had traded a knife and a fishing pole for 2 baby food size jars of it from a Yanomami tribesman in the Amazon. He described them as using it to transform into their spirit animals before going out hunting. We all felt like this would be the perfect opportunity and location to use it. We ingested some yopo and explored the surroundings using the cave as a home base. It was an other-worldly experience. I ended up sitting in front of a tree just outside of the cave that caught my attention and to which I felt a deep connection. I sat there with my thoughts and visions for what seemed like hours (but was probably only about thirty minutes). I was, of course, taking pictures as well and snapped one of this fascinating tree. The next day we did a day trip to Mexico and then gradually started making our way back home to Virginia, finally arriving there after a month on the road and 9,000 miles on the rental car.
Back at home, I had all my film developed and went through the shots of all our adventures. I got to the picture of the tree in Sedona that I had communed with. Something was missing. The photo didn’t quite capture the overwhelmingly vivid, bright, sparkly color and life force I remembered from my trip. I scanned the photo and opened it in Photoshop deciding to try to enhance and alter it to make it look how I remembered it. Gradually, I was able to get it pretty close to how I remembered it. This ended up being the first image in the style I would eventually call psychography, from a contraction of the words psychedelic photography. Over the years, and many many trips later, I have created hundreds of such images. I continue to use this style to enhance my images bringing out their surreal or dreamlike qualities, and creating the little worlds from my childhood.
Shortly after my road trip I got a job managing a large format printing shop, where I worked for over 20 years. I was able to use all of the equipment and printers to explore and create my art and began participating in various art shows and photo exhibits throughout the DC area. I continued exploring the US, and have been to every state except Alaska. Since making the switch to digital, I continue shooting thousands of pictures per trip. I also started to travel more internationally, and moved to Japan in 2017.
Currently I am exploring and documenting Japan, Japanese culture and of course nature. I am also taking this opportunity to explore and experience new cultures and locales in other parts of Asia. I am hoping that through my art I not only create memories and little worlds for myself but also to share with others, who I hope can find some meaning, enjoyment, or escape through my work.
