While studying abroad in Geneva, Switzerland during 1982, I visited the great museums of France, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, UK and Spain along with the viewing firsthand the art of Picasso, Matisse, Modigliani and Brancusi which fueled my excitement for painting, collage and sculpture.  It was then I decided to become an artist.  After coming back to the US, in January of 1983 I was introduced to the work of Isamu Noguchi by my great uncle who was a sculptor.  I spent a month with my uncle where I learned to carve stone and do metal work.  It was around then I decided to switch from painting to sculpture.

Later in graduate school, it was a yearlong class on the painting, poetry and architecture of Michelangelo that grounded me in the concept of being multidisciplinary in one’s approach to doing creative work. It was also a survey course on Modern Art where I was exposed to the work of John Cage and his use of chance operations. Through the lens of Cage’s compositions and musical performances I was introduced to the work of Merce Cunningham and his Dance Company along with the paintings and stage sets by Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns that were created for various Cage/Cunningham performances.

After moving to New York City in 1986, I was amazed to see the work of Richard Long at the Guggenheim Museum. He redefined for me what it was to be a sculptor. Long was resolute not to disturb or alter anything, anywhere. He walked through the landscape, working with what he found along the way and documented the impermanent results with his camera.  This exhibit gave me permission to make sculpture that used found objects and was ephemeral in nature. This was counterintuitive to the notion of the historical goal of sculpture which was supposed to be the most permanent of all the visual art forms.

That same year while working for the art non-profit Creative Time, I was introduced by Anita Contini to the sculptor Mark Di Suvero. Di Suvero was starting Socrates Sculpture Park, a block away from his studio in Long Island City, Queens. I met with Di Suvero again at his studio and was offered the job of “gate keeper” for the sculpture park. I was given a raw studio space to live across the street from the park and essentially my job was to open the park gate in the morning and close it when I returned home at night.  Eventually, I was offered a full time position as one of Di Suvero’s assistants.

A block away from my studio in Long Island City was the newly opened Isamu Noguchi Museum. Four years after I was introduced to Noguchi’s work by my uncle I had the extreme good fortune to meet Noguchi and have lunch with him in his private quarters attached to the museum. It was while living between Di Suvero and Noguchi I created a series of large stone sculptures employing basic materials of stone, rope and wood which were shown at the Queens Museum as part of a group show in 1987.