Education

I have taken four years of courses at the Art Institute of Chicago, where I invested most of my time in painting, sculpture and history classes. Towards the end of my studies there, I focused more on sculpture and painted at home. In the sculpture department, I spent most of my time in figure sculpture classes, taking them every year in attendance. I did modeling work, but often went to the metal shop to work on the torches and welders. I enjoyed the modeling as an exercise, but found more potential in welded metalwork, being that it has only been around one hundred years instead of thousands of years. I also took foundry and ceramics courses besides figure sculpture. In this sculpture work, I tried to carry over the very textured work that I had earlier started in painting. I was impressed by the effect of collisions of textures in nature as well as in art. My early college work was very loose and free compared to the more controlled pencil and colored pencil drawings I was working on in high school. My final work at the school was a balance between raw textures and more controlled brushwork or metalwork.

I also attended St. Paul College and enrolled in a Mechanical Design program. I learned computer aided design and manufacturing processes from this program. It was an easy transition from sheetmetal sculpture and foundry to sheetmetal design and injection molded part design.

Exhibitions

Marc Rubin Gallery

I exhibited at Marc's public studio/gallery for a year in 1999/2000. His gallery was a perfect space for my organic metal sculptures because it was filled with tons of plants and his paintings reflected his own appreciation of nature. He taught me about professional exhibition and speaking about my work. He is a very talented artist and also has a website at MarcRubin.com. 

High Risk Gallery

No Attitude exhibition. Marc got me a spot in this charity show in Chicago in June of 2001

   2002 St. Paul Art Crawl

I exhibited at the Renaissance Box building in a hallway space outside of different artists studios. I was glad to be a part of such a large and diverse showing of artists. 

2006 Frank Stone Gallery

The frank stone gallery included me in a group show with two other artists.

Ideas

The ideas in my work have been supplied by my love of plants and nature. I paint along other themes, but nature has been a constant theme for me since high school. Once I had moved into my own apartment in college, I started to collect plants and I started to look towards nature more for patterns and beauty. It has become the dominant theme in my work. I have bought many books on plants, seashells, insects and landscapes. As I started collecting more plants I was increasingly drawn and pleased by the colors, textures and patterns in nature. I began to be just as interested in looking at a jellyfish as I was in looking at a beautiful painting. While art contains symbolic powers through patterns, natures patterns are only symbolic of life. I stood in far greater awe in the Puerto Rican rainforest and different conservatories than I ever have in any exhibition. My attraction to natures patterns has not stopped for me and it has become the longest obsession besides art I have had in my life. I eventually decided that I would dedicate my work to the preservation of nature. My work about nature is a communication on my appreciation and obsession that I cannot as fully realize in words. It is therefore directed towards the people out there who have similar sympathies.