TennesseeSelf-Taught My siblings and I were very influenced by my father, a Presbyterian minister and an amateur artist, who took us to numerous art shows and exhibits, including his own on New Jersey boardwalks and Delaware city squares. I grew in the appreciation of art and of the beauty of God and His world, despite its brokenness. I love the Atlantic coastline with its inlets and shorebirds, its sand dunes, and sunscapes. I marvel at the different woods found throughout the earth with their varities of colors and grains. While beachcombing, my father found an old decoy without a head. He carved it a head. This aroused my own interest in bird carving, in the wide world of birds, and in woodworking.