Copper Cat - Jaguar Artwork

Growing up in one of America's great steel towns of post World War II, metalsmithing permeated my DNA. At the age of twelve my drawing of a woman's face in profile won an art award and age fourteen my hand-cast lead sinkers helped win a local fishing contest. At age sixteen, I received as a gift for Christmas my first set of high-temperature asbestos gloves. By the finish of high school (our school mascot was a Steeler of course) I was skilled in orthogonal/perspective drafting and certified in torch & stick work. If I was lacking inspiration, a trip to any of the local Ecclesiastical, Gothic Revival, Art Deco, Prairie School, High Victorian Gothic, Neoclassical or Beaux Arts Style building in the area would renew my passion for art and design. After college (Dean's List-mechanical engineering) an early purchase was my first 35mm SLR camera (while residing in the Frank Lloyd Wright Wescott House), fostering my study of color, composition and framing. During the many years and a multitude of work in North America and personal projects that followed, design as well as craftsmanship came to be the hallmarks of a successful project. I was captivated by elegant design wherever found. The complex but elegant flow of a turbine blade was equally powerful as the equally complex and graceful dynamics of a jaguar at high speed. Stationary objects such as Buckminster Fuller’s Geodesic Dome as well as Frank Lloyd Wright's architectural designs also piqued my sense of balance and proportion. There was no escaping the fact that elegant design both at rest and in motion in its purest (simplest) form creates harmony and conflicts the least with the world about us.This generation has witnessed the micro-mapping of DNA. Can there be a more beautiful shape with a more important function? In the words of the great jazz musician Charles Mingus "Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, that's creativity." Then I saw Northern Arizona over 30 years ago with it’s persistent sunshine and immediately loved the area. Gone was the claustrophobic feeling of large cities and feeling closed-in during the winter months. The area’s primal and diverse geology combined with it’s legendary cultural art played to my concepts of elegant design appearing simple - without waste. This is where visual awesome lives.