Early on, an art-centered education and artist's instinct turned diverse jobs in three different areas of the country, into a journey of discovery and distillation; it was a grand time. Two decades later, desire to be of service to the arts and the inner compass still strong, I earned an MAT ’91, from MICA, and taught within that program for 10 years. I also teach for MICA’s Young People’s Studio Program, starting the clay program in 1992.

My artwork, which involves most media, suits teaching perfectly, and references ancient and archetypal ideas. Many aesthetic influences are from growing up on a farm in Pennsylvania. As an undergraduate at the Kansas City Art Institute, I realized those influences, like the way someone might use wire or other materials to quickly mend a fence and how it weathered years later, catching tufts of animal hair. Unusual combinations of materials are still a preferred way of teaching and making art. At a time when it was unfashionable, my sculpture looked like artifacts, metaphoric adornment, accoutrements. "Romancing" sites such as Stonehenge with a series of large wood-fired plates; or Tibet, with fashioned collections and installations of "relics", I was conjuring places and cultures and instinctively invoking some genuine attributes (as I found out later after actually visiting sites). It follows that I studied archaeology, did field work and research, briefly in England, then Russia, Mongolia, and Iran. Photography is my primary medium for documenting travels and creating work for publication and display. Travel continues to knit together Eurasian culture and history. Within this vast puzzle new pieces beckon: the Caucasus, Kyrgyzstan, Kham Province Tibet, promising the remarkable. History and culture are made visible through art - the lens for viewing life contextually and valuing differences.

This early propensity for antiquity led to work on two monumental sculpture projects: I assisted sculptor Alan LeQuire for the first three years' full-scale construction phase of the 41-foot 10-inch-tall Athena Parthenos in the Parthenon, Nashville, Tennessee. The fiberglass-reinforced gypsum statue, which stands gilded today, is considered (aside from structural materials) an accurate reconstruction of the original wood and chryselephantine original. As the western hemisphere's tallest indoor freestanding statue, this Athena serves the Greek Athena reconstruction project as a guide for their work. When visiting Japanese sculptors constructed a monumental wooden statue on the MICA campus in 1990, I researched, designed curriculum, and helped develop a school tour program during the statue's unique construction period. Graduate Art Education Dean, Dr. Karen Carroll and I co-authored the curriculum guide, Fudo Myoh-Oh, Japanese Sculpture Project.

Experience reinforces my teaching philosophy: “The arts are essential to knowing, expressing, and solving problems that constitute a whole education, a whole life.“ While still at MICA, I retired from 23 years teaching Elementary Public School Art and developed a PreK – 9th grade art program at the Montessori School of Westminster, MD for the next four years. The joy of teaching is in shared wonder of discovery and play-as-learning. Children's directness and purity of visual expression fulfill me aesthetically and challenge my own art making. Collaborating with brilliant Art Education majors at MICA, I share perspectives as a practicing teacher and, in turn, MICA's emerging artist/teachers further my professional development with cutting-edge ideas and continual mindfulness toward crafting best practices. Designing art problems, testing ideas, seeing the resultant transformative effects on young artists is a work in progress.

Alumni Affiliation

Master of Arts in Teaching, '91