February 9, 2025

How did my commercial work in the Visual Effects affect my personal work?  I probably could not produce my work as I do now without the experience of having worked in the ILM Model Shop for almost 16 years.  Much of the work I did there inspired me to think abstractly about potential works of my own. Some of the materials we used in the Model Shop became fodder for our own work.  For example, a friend creates pieces from used paint sticks.  I love some of the compositions paint overspray has made, or even stains created from making molds (for monsters) on plywood.  I’ve kept a number of these by-products as part of my art collection. Working in a production atmosphere improves one’s ability to make decisions quickly and think on your feet.  I gained a great deal of confidence working with a strict deadline and now make decisions much more quickly. The exposure I had to materials and methods opened up an expanded world of possibilities. My colleagues, especially from the Model Shop, have remained very close and we support each other in all of life’s passages, as well as in the personal creative work we’ve focused on in our post Visual Effects life. I worked for years in the computer graphics end of visual effects, and I learned skills I use every day.  I can navigate software more easily than I ever could have before, and this has a surprising impact on what I can do in my own work.

What was it like growing up in a household of artists?   I was always encouraged to be an artist, unlike many artists. My family on both sides has a legacy of professional artists and artisans going back generations. We are a family that values visual culture, so I had an exceptionally rich environment growing up, and very international.  My father and mother, both artists, participated in multiple cultural diplomacy excursions around the world, more than once to what was then the Soviet Union. Dad was president of the international delegation of artists within the UNESCO organization; first the American delegation, then of the entire delegation from all 60 or so member countries. Several times he was sent to Asia under the auspices of the State Department to do lectures on art and be a cultural ambassador.  He and my mother made many friends abroad and our house was like living in the United Nations.

What movements shaped my artistic interests?  I grew up in the 1950s and 1960s in the Northeast. In our household, there was quite intense interest in all of art history including the more “modern” (at that time) abstract expressionists.  My era appreciated that era and embraced the movements immediately following. As an artist, I am aware of how my early interests affect what I do now, and I also pay attention to what younger artists are doing. In the end, an artist has to stay true to their own vision and not follow trends. The Arte Povera movement has always interested me; the idea of using “found” or humble materials to create. Sometimes the “found” materials are ones I myself have created, but which have combined themselves in completely unintentional ways.  I like throwing bits on a table, because they tend to organize themselves in a far more interesting way than I would arrange myself.  Some of the most inspiring source objects I have are things that were cast off from working in the ILM model shop. My favorites are the cast-off pieces from a wooden airplane model. All this is experimenting, akin to scientific trials.

What can I say about current art and culture?  Visual art has become so democratic; so many people exploring this, in some cases, as respite for the horrific events in the world. I can only speak for the visual arts, as that’s what I do. We tend to understand our own artistic form better than other forms, which is normal.  I have ceased making much in the way of quality judgements; I only voice thoughts about the art that speaks to me. I think it a good thing that so many people are turning to art as a means of expression.  Everyone should try it.

How do I find inspiration?  I have several lifetimes of visions inside my head. I am lucky to not have “dry” periods, at least so far. If I’ve had to spend too much time having to deal with travel, life chores and demands, it can take a couple of weeks to get the locomotive chugging full speed again.  My basic focal points in an image are line, movement, composition, color, and volume, not necessarily in that order. Though at the moment I work abstractly, this is of equal importance as when I am creating a representational image. Movement of composition is primary to me.  In other eras of my practice I have done exclusively sculpture.  I continue to explore the inspiration of maps, which has interested me since my art school days.  Part of the exercise of “seeing” is looking at the world as a negative shape, for example, rather than seeing trees, looking at the space between the trees or just the outline of a tree.  I have a favorite walk I do many times a week and part of the exercise is to look at familiar things in a different way. This practice produces photographs, and over time my photographs, from wherever they spring, have connected me to my hand-made work. This is something Sean Scully does quite a bit. I’ve begun to notice more the relation of the photos I am taking to the physical works I am making. A future project is to match my photographs to physical art I’ve done to create diptychs or maybe triptychs.

Does nostalgia play a part in my thinking?  As I get older, my work has reached back to memories of joy, especially in childhood. I have associated some of my map-like works with books important to me as a child, such as Winnie-the-Pooh, Alice in Wonderland, and The Phantom Tollbooth. These books touch on geography:  The Hundred Acre Woods, Milo’s voyage through Digitopolis, Dictionopolis and elsewhere, and Alice’s voyage in Wonderland relate well to the places we visit in dreams and our unconscious. I enjoy creating works that suggest I have sent the characters from these books on continuing adventures.

What artists have influenced me the most?  Paul Klee, Saul Steinberg, Wassily Kandinsky, Jasper Johns, Cecily Brown, Elizabeth Murray, Eva Hesse, Louise Bourgeois, Willem de Kooning, David Hockney, Frank Stella, Sonia Delaunay, Judy Pfaff, Sean Scully.  Finally, my father and mother were great teachers, my father being one of the most accomplished draughtsman in his time.

What painting materials do I favor?  I have recently been working in watercolor and continue to prefer oil for canvases. At some point I will probably try out acrylic again.  I love encaustic and like to use it in unusual ways.  The trials doing encaustic are incomplete, so the jury is out on the success of that, though one of my favorite paintings combines oil and encaustic.  I have been doing quite a bit of collage lately.  Collage is a great medium for composition and color exploration. I prefer to use work of my own to using magazines or printed papers. I digitally print my watercolors and cut them up for use in collage.

What other processes do I enjoy?  I have done quite a bit of printmaking in my life and own two etching presses, one in a rebuilding stage.  It is an historical 1902 press of which only three were made. Sometimes I think I am more of a sculptor than anything, but am not currently doing any. When I do, I like working directly in wax. I am happy working in any malleable material, but also enjoy working in wood.