I have always been an artist. As a young child I illustrated and bound into books stories that my brother invented, and we sold them around our neighborhood. I ran wild through the woods creating friends with whom I could play and bringing to life out of the refuse of others places that existed only in my mind. Some of my best art moments occurred on stormy, Florida nights when the power in our trailer went out, and we gathered at the kitchen table to draw by lamplight.
My formal art training began in grade school, where my handwriting was so bad that one of my teachers took a special
And I have always been mechanically inclined. I got my first truck and rebuilt it with my father before I could legally drive it. I was trained in automotive engineering in the army, where I served as a track vehicle mechanic with the 5th Combat Engineers in Iraq. I worked as an auto technician after the army until I became interested in injection mold processing; and then I took a job where I got to make molds and operate machines that are as big as a bus!
It was in graduate school where my two loves were married, and I started to create kinetic art. Making gears and levers out of wood and found objects became a challenge I readily accepted—I found I loved to work with wood, and I’ve always loved to work with junk, my found treasures. It was here, too, that I came to love teaching. In my first semester I was given two drawing classes because I excelled as a draftsman. It turns out I was an effective teacher, also, and after I left grad school I continued to teach at Eckerd College, a small four-year school on Florida’s gulf coast. I left there to teach at Shorecrest School, Florida’s oldest independent day school, where I fell in love with teaching to high school students a variety of classes in traditional and digital media.
During my travels I received a wide-ranging variety of commendations including the SW Asia Campaign Medal with two Bronze Service Stars, multiple grants to travel and to study Chinese art and culture—including a National Endowment for the Humanities Award—and many awards for my artwork in local, state, and national art competitions. And I have had some amazing and wonderful experiences, like hiking alone in the Negev Dessert while living in Israel, commingling with the multitudes of people in Beijing, China, and getting punched in the chest by Robert Bly! Most recently I became the heir to the Sunhearth Appalachian Dulcimer building tradition.I live with two cats, André Flyrod and Allowicious. We are a single truck family.
