Artist Statement For me, sculpting is like a grand, surprise adventure. People sometimes ask me, “Where do you get your ideas?” My answer is simple: “I discover them while I’m sculpting.” My process is essentially assemblage sculpture. Assemblage is putting forms together to make something else, like the eccentric welder who makes sculptures from junkyard finds. My process is different from that type of sculpting in that I make the individual shapes that I put together later, and I make them out of wax.First, I make random hollow wax shapes that I think are interesting in their own right. I have literally thousands of these in my “bone pile.” Periodically I sift through the pile and experiment with combining several forms in intriguing ways. Some of the resulting work is strictly abstract work, but I usually look for forms that evoke figures, animals, or nature.I never plan or sketch my art in advance because I find it confines me to familiar images. My creativity thrives while exploring combinations of shapes spontaneously in three dimensions. To keep my work fresh and novel, I often purposely juxtapose forms that I think might not look good together just to see what happens. Some of my most compelling work results from using forms in ways other than their obvious reference—such as using a form that resembles legs as the head for a piece.Texture also plays a crucial role in my work. I love textures that make a piece look weathered, aged, or organic even if the form itself is abstract. I strive to create unique, uncalculated textures, often using unconventional tools like weathered barnwood and random pieces of warm scrap metal. If a texturing tool is a little awkward to use, then I get more unexpected and unplanned results.This is why making my original wax sculptures is like a grand, surprise adventure: When an “idea” for a sculpture emerges from this process, it feels serendipitous—like it occurred on accident or by destiny. I often look at my finished pieces and wonder, “How did I ever come up with that?”The process of transforming a wax sculpture into bronze is a markedly different experience. It is a time-intensive, meticulous, and highly technical craft. Many sculptors whose works are bronze never actually work with the bronze itself. Instead, they pay someone else to do it. Since I enjoy these more craftsman-like parts of the creation process, and I pride myself in the fact that I can do that, too. In the past I even operated a homemade foundry to pour bronze in my backyard. Although I no longer pour bronze at home, I still do every other part of the process myself, including preparing wax for bronze molds, welding, surface finishing, and patination (coloring the bronze).I feel incredibly fortunate to have found a passion that allows me to engage both my crazy, freewheeling creativity and my obsessive, detail-oriented craftsmanship. It is a privilege to share the results of this adventure with others. I am profoundly honored when someone decides to bring one of my artworks into their lives. Each piece is born as a delightful surprise to me, and if they bring you surprised delight as well, that makes me very happy. I am an educator by trade -- math teacher, then principal, now teacher again. I have worked in rural, suburban, and urban schools with nearly every type of student and demographic. I came to teaching after stints as a tool design engineer and a fine arts student at Kendall College of Art and Design. I am an artist and a craftsman at heart. I have been toying with sculpting for 30 years, taking it pretty seriously (while working full time) for the past 22 years. When my wife Anne and I purchased our first home in Battle Creek, MI in 1998, I created a studio in the basement and that is when I started to develop as an artist. It was transformative to have a place I could leave in creative disarray, and to build a space with the feeling I needed to nurture my creativity. Now we live in rural Marshall, MI, and I have a small but adequate barn for a studio, which makes even greater creativity and production possible. And because we live in the country, I can fire up my bronze foundry (which I designed and built with the help of friends and family) in the backyard whenever it is that time in the process. What a difference place, space, and resources can make!Anne and our three children, Maddy, Liam, and Aidan, have helped me understand the need for balance in my life, and the central part that art plays in that balance for me and our family.