I always enjoyed drawing and coloring and doing all those things, but I remember when
I was in second grade, my teacher gave me a note to take home to my mother.
The note was from my art teacher, and she wanted my mother to come to school because
she asked my mother, did she realize that you have a talented son in art?
My mother came to school, talked to my teacher, my art teacher, Mrs. Hare, who became a mentor
and a wonderful part of my life, and announced to my mother that she was going to put me in
the sixth grade art club.
So that was my big deal, I thought, boy, I really hit the big time.
I wanted to be an artist for as long as I could remember, especially being an art teacher,
because I always thought that would be the nicest thing to be able to give art to others.
I went to Kensington High School, that's where I became acquainted with Mrs. Davis,
who was my art teacher.
We had a wonderful connection, and she also became a mentor.
I really enjoyed being with her, not only for that, but she gave me another insight,
which became very much a part of my life, and that's collecting and antiques.
She loved antiques, and she started to teach me about them.
It was such an important part of my life, and she really did change a lot, you know,
showed me things that I had never seen before.
After four years with Mrs. Davis, it was finally time for us to get my portfolio ready.
I decided that I'd like to go to the University of Buffalo, and we worked on the portfolio,
but I had never learned more than just doing what I could see, painting outdoors, drawing
a still life, but that portfolio, I was really happy that they saw something in it, and let
me be an art student at UB, because it was rather mediocre, you know, really, and once
I got there, wow, it was a different world from being in Kensington, you know.
It was like going from the waiting pool into the sea, you know, there it was.
All these professors, and you'd see the work, there was talk about line, there was talk
about color, it was a different world.
Suddenly I had professors that were really quite sophisticated, and I was lucky to have
Seymour Dronovic, who was a master at collage, he was fabulous at color, he was wonderful
at design, and I wanted to interpret some of those things that he taught me.
And then of course with Harvey Breverman it was drawing, even though I had been drawing
for years and years, I got a different perspective on drawing, you know, the man talked about
line quality, he talked about sensitivity, you know, there were things that I had never
realized that drawing could be spontaneous, you know, so many things, and what a wonderful
door to be open to you.
For a very long time now, collage has been the most important part of my art.
As I look at it, I understand why, because there's so many connections.
One connection is just the love of collecting, and that is a very important part of a collage
maker's work, and ever since I've been very, very small, I just loved collecting.
If it was stamps, if it was coins, if it, you know, matter what it was, I just liked it,
I'd like to keep it together, I'd like to look at those things, and then after I had
all these things, I seemed to connect with Dronovic, and I looked at his collages, and
I just was so fascinated by them, and then I started to look, I go, gee, I'm looking
at it, I go, there's little parts of papers, there's little old items in here, there's
different ways of manipulating the color with paper, so I started getting pieces and things
and pictures and papers, then I started thinking, these papers and pieces and things, they're
not just those things, they're fragments of people's lives, they're pieces of lives.
These things were kept, they were loved, they were considered something very important in
their lives, and now they're mine, so now what do I do with them?
How do I present them?
How do I put them together?
You want these lines, you want this to come in, I see this starting coming in, it works
around into here, it comes into here, it breaks, it stops, then it repeats itself.
People go, oh, I'd like to do a collage, you know, you have to just have the right connection
for it, it's not a scrapbook page, you know what I'm saying?
It's not just something that's put down, and they go, here's the collage, no.
There's a fabulous stamp back here, but it's gone, it might come out again when I do my
sanding, and it might come, a little bit of it might come out, which would be beautiful
because it'd be a blue, and that's complement of the orange.
I have a wonderful collage, too, that are extremely abstract, but they're based on,
I found the tiniest little envelope, and in that envelope were punches from a steam car
conductor, and someone collected these little punches.
It's the most amazing thing, and I looked at that, and I go, these punches are well
over a hundred years old.
Someone has kept them all these years in this tiny, tiny envelope.
The collages, at first appearance, they're very abstract, they're extremely abstract,
they're involved with design, they're involved with color, but you know what, they're also
involved with the memory.
There it comes.
Oh yeah, look at that.
Oh yeah.
Oh yeah.
There's the memory of the beauty, there's photographs, there's all these different images with it,
and I like to take one of those antique images of beauty and combine it with things that
have deteriorated because you know what, those deteriorated things are beautiful.
There's a beautiful patina, there's a beautiful color, there's things that you could not get
any other way.
I can't take those and find those colors, it has to be aged to be able to get that richness,
and that's the only way you can do it.
If you really look at art, I always tell people, you can't just glance at it, you have to
look at it, and I'm so thrilled when they can discover that there's something more than
just the shapes, there's something more than just you know, the pieces of paper, there
could be a little story there, there could be a reason, the collages are my stories.
I always think about Tennessee Williams when he has Blanche say, beauty is passing, but
the beauty of the soul lasts forever, and it can increase, and that's the way I feel
about these creations I do.
It's beauty that has lasted, and it will last because I'm making something out of it.
It's important.
It's important.
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