I was born in 1952, in Boulder City, Nevada, a City Constructed in the desert years earlier to house the workers who built Hoover Dam, the first large dam on the Colorado River. my father and mother moved there from the east because my dad got his first professional job with his new degree in metalurgical engineering to work in a factory just opened in Boulder City. The factory used tons of cheap electricity from the dam to make Titanium Metal, used in the new aerospace industry post WW II. The first photo of me is mom, wearing a fancy dress, holding the newborn me in her arms, standing in a backyard decorated with a tipped-over kitchen stove.
As soon as they had saved up the money, the three of us moved into a new cinderblock house they had bought in nearby Las Vegas, with three bedrooms and a swamp cooler on the roof. Back then, the population of Las vegas was about 35,000 and the Strip had a charming Casinos-in-the-Desert feeling to it.
Before long, I had a little brother and sister, and a new house with an air conditioner on the roof. Best of all, the new house was across the street from a public park and swimming pool, which proved a godsend to me and my siblings. Because, as we grew older, and mom insisted, “Get out of the house and play. You’re driving me nuts!”, we could escape the 110 degree heat by hanging out at the pool.
On Sundays, dad took us to Lake Mead where we hiked down to an isolated cove where dad fished and we swam and snorkeled. Every Sunday, we had fresh bass or trout for dinner, which dad cooked. Dad knew how to fish. And cook. Mom hated fishing and got food on the table because that was what moms and wives did, but she kept it simple.
One evening every week, dad would take us to the public library, where I discovered the science fiction section and soon got addicted to the genre. Years later, in high school, I found myself fascinated by the math and science classes, partially inspired, I believe, by those library books. Art was not a taught subject, a class, in any school I attended beyond grade school. On the other hand, mom, an enthusiastic home decorator, had art hanging all over the house. She liked renaissance italian, early Picasso, and Modigliani.
By the time I reached my teens, I had known for years, I wanted to escape the desert, and as a senior in high school, convinced my parents to send me to UC Berkeley.
A year later, I finished my freshman year at Berkeley, but was beginning to discover other things I found interesting. In the basement of the Student Union for example, there was a Ceramics Studio with Potter’s Wheels, kilns, glazes etc. There was also a Photography Studio with darkrooms. When I had spare time, I messed around and learned how to throw pots, develop film, and make prints. all of this was after I had read my text books, done my homework and All that other school stuff.
Then there was a new development: my parents informed me that they didn’t have money to keep paying out of state tuition at UC, and they wanted me to return to Las Vegas and continue going to college there. Reluctantly, I returned home, and signed up at University of Nevada Las Vegas. To my surprise, I discovered that the instruction at UNLV was better than what I had been receiving at Berkeley! For example, at Berkeley there are 350 students in a lecture hall for calculus 101. At UNLV there were eighteen students in my linear algebra class with a professor, not a TA. The only problem was, I was going crazy being back in Las Vegas. After two semesters at UNLV, I fled back to Berkeley.
Back in Berkeley, I moved in with some friends, and began a series of low-paying and horrible jobs I won’t bore you with. A year later, I qualified as a California resident, and went back to Cal. Two years later, i had my degree, not in engineering as planned, but in Economics.
I I know it sounds crazy, but rather than trying to make something of my degree, I decided to get into ceramics, using the limited skills I have learned in the basement of the Student Union at Cal. I joined a ceramic Studio and spent a year throwing pots and working at odd jobs to pay the bills. after I had accumulated a considerable inventory of Plates, large bowls, coffee cups, lidded jars, it was time to sell. I started to get a license to sell pottery on the sidewalk in Berkeley, but realized in a Flash I wasn’t up to it, and decided to look elsewhere for income. I got a job working construction , paying ten times more per hour than trying to sell my pots on the street.
One day while walking down the street, I noticed a flyer stapled to a telephone pole: “FIGURE DRAWING CLASS” I pulled the flyer off the pole, and stuck it in my pocket. A week later, I showed up to attend the weirdest figure drawing class I would ever be in. It took place in the building of the English Department at Berkeley. it was the kind of tiny classroom where a TA might meet a Section of 15 students: Office desk in the front, Blackboard on the wall behind it, and less than 20 chairs. In no possible way was the space a “studio” It would be more natural to pose nude in a bar or on a factory floor at night than in this tiny classroom. To be honest, I can’t remember any further details of that class. Not the instructor, not the model, did she pose on the desk, not the other students, but I do remember the room because it was exactly like thousands of others across the country.
Anyway, that class was the first of many, and the important thing was: it got me started. After drawing nude models with charcoal pencils, I added colors with pastel, then I added backgrounds…at one point, I noticed a fashion magazine my wife often had called “W”, and, transfixed by the photos, I did many drawings, pastels, and paintings based on what those photographers had created. I did paintings of photos of landscapes, gardens, architecture I saw in newspapers or magazines or, when the internet arrived, the internet. I found private drawing groups with no teacher where we split the price of the model.
In 2019 I mostly shut down my business as a general contractor, occasionally doing consults, but mostly work in my garden and do art