I live in Mission Woods, Kansas, a stone’s throw from Missouri, though I've never actually tried. I've been criss-crossing State Line for much of my life, growing up in Springfield, Missouri, with an English professor and amateur photographer as a father and a bohemian painter, sculptor and ceramic artist as a mother.
I got my start in photography at an early age when my parents got me an Instamatic to document the epic driving trip the family took when moving from Seattle to Missouri. I breathed Dektol fumes in an unventilated home darkroom as a teenager and went on to study photojournalism at the University of Missouri.
My first professional stint was at the Topeka Capitol Journal, where I spent five years on the photo staff and more importantly, met my wife Nancy.
We temporarily broke the I-70 curse and spent a year in Venezuela, where we worked for the Caracas Daily Journal and other publications.
In the years since then, we’ve lived in St. Louis, Columbia (a MA in journalism for Keith), and Kansas City, having four wonderful children in various hospitals along the highway and careers in public relations and communications.
About six years ago, I scratched a life-long itch and began taking classes at the Kansas City Clay Guild, growing increasingly serious about the craft of ceramics. With aspirations for decorating my pottery that were greater than my design skills, I decided to bring something I was good at - photography - into my ceramic art. A good portion of my recent work is the result of my experiments along several themes combining pottery and photography.
2022 brought another opportunity, as I stepped in as curator of the 80 Santa Fe Art Gallery and have been privileged to start meeting local artists and getting to better know the thriving Kansas City area arts scene.
