Wild Thing Collage

The interface between my interior self and the outside world is the uniting concept behind my recent work I began making yarn paintings in 1969 while still in High School. I thought I had invented the technique. In college at The Cooper Union I first kept yarn painting to myself. My professors preferred my drawings to my paintings. My painting professor, Jack Whitten, asked what we did during vacation. I volunteered that I'd spent the vacation working on a project, but it wasn't exactly painting. After visiting my studio Jack told me to stick to yarn and he would consider them paintings. Seeing a yarn painting at a Greenwich Village flea market I discovered that yarn painting was a traditional art form among the Wixarika (Huichol) people of Mexico. In 1992 I received a Fulbright Fellowship to travel to Mexico to meet fellow yarn painters and talk shop. Since my Fulbright I have maintained my relationship with fellow yarn painters both by returning to Mexico regularly and by hosting Wixarika artists in my home. I have also received Artist Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, The Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation, The New Jersey State Council on the Arts (twice) and the Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation.