BIOGRAPHY:
I was born in Harrisburg, PA., United States, in 1976. I grew up in rural Pennsylvania. My interest in creative expression began at an early age. As a child I raised pigeons ("roller" pigeons, which perform aerial stunts), and started playing in a band (with my brother on the drums and myself on bass/vocals) when I was 14.
I have no formal training of any kind, and in fact I was even expelled from my high school art class. I didn't finish high school (although I did get my GED years later), and moved to Philadelphia during the summer of 1994. I spent a few years living in squats, usually with no utilities, including an abandoned health spa and an old hotel. I then found a job, through a friend, working on fishing boats in the Bering Sea. In total I spent a little over a year of my life at sea, working either 16.5 hour shifts, or 6 on 6 off shifts. I lived a few weeks of each year in Seattle or the surrounding area. As the 90's came to a close I decided to leave this life behind, and moved back to Philadelphia. Since this time I've worked odd jobs, (briefly) in food service, and primarily as a house painter.
Through the years I have, one way or another, kept up a relatively steady pace of creative activity. I've made a 'zine', "Decades of Confusion Feed the Insect", which is essentially a journal of my art and poetry, since 1995. I've played in many musical ensembles, too numerous to list in this bio. I've completed many pieces of artwork, and shared this work through whatever avenues were available at the time. I've had numerous small shows in cafes, bars, and bookstores, and have also shared my work through the 'DIY' punk-music underground.
Since 2008 I have had art shown via Coalition Ingenu, a Philadelphia-based group that aims to "create a complete system for the recognition of creative achievement by self-taught artists marginalized by extraordinary circumstances."
In 2011 I'll be featured as the protagonist in the documentary film Resurrect Dead: The Mystery of the Toynbee Tiles.
ARTIST'S STATEMENT
I see my body of creative expression in total as part of a story being told down the centuries, within our human species, beginning at least 20,000 years ago. While cultures rise, flourish and crumble, empires run their course, and technologies change the speed and mode of our communication, our human story, which we tell to ourselves, continues to captivate us. I view myself as a participant in an archetypal story-line, which enables us to commune with our ancient past. The past to which our decorative story-song instinct ties us is one which, I think, arcs back to the beginning of time. Our relation to all life-forms, both extinct and yet to come, strands together in a lace-like pattern, which we are both shaped by, and participants in the active creation of. This is a past which predates even our current status of human-hood, which traces ever further back to our origins from the primordial chaos of cosmic upheaval, and also propel us forward, into the unknown of the future.
From this point of origin, among the colliding of stars, black holes, and ancient lichens, pterodons, and the first flowering plants, our human creative impulse has emerged. I am proud to be a flag-bearer in this expression of my species, on this planet, at this time.
My body of creative work tends to address the modern confusion between the "inner" and "outer" realms of experience. While many today believe that the "inner" world of introspective experience is somehow less "real" than the external, I suggest, by my work, that inner experience (i.e. dreams, hallucinations, etc. etc.) have a reality and an influence that is just as much a part of the world as any other component. Our thoughts are in fact electro-chemical events, which can be measured and objectively verified by external measuring devices. Our thoughts and dreams are real. The word "art", traced to its origin, means "to fit together or join." I see the task of art in my contemporary time and place to be to mend the fracturing of our perceptions of external and internal reality, to bring about a realization that consciousness pervades all things, and that the universe emanates from within us, as much as we are emanations, or expressions, of this same universe.