My earliest recollection of actually “making art” was at about age five, right after my parents and I returned from a day at the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh. My parents were not into art, so we did not visit the painting galleries. However, we did view a room filled with knight’s armor, and that had a huge impact on me. When we got home, I began to draw knights in armor, based on the examples I had seen that day in the Carnegie. I didn’t have a sketchbook then, or access to drawing paper. My mom provided me with flattened paper grocery sacks and pieces of white card stock that was part of the packaging of new shirts. Even back then, without my realizing it, I was making art using repurposed materials. 

Even at that early stage in my life I was telling people I was going to be an artist when I grew up. However, my idea of what an artist was came from Saturday Evening Post covers, Walt Disney, and a Saturday morning TV show called Learn to Draw with Jon Gnagy. As I got older, my parents supported my art making by buying me art materials on occasion, but never took my artistic endeavors seriously. They looked at the pursuit of art as a hobby, not really a way to earn a living. I can’t totally blame them. In the various Ohio River towns we lived in, we never knew anyone who earned their living as an “artist”. Most of the breadwinners we knew were steelworkers, miners, construction workers. 

I am passionate about working with found materials, aka my “trash”. I am especially attracted to those items that show use, wear and even some rust. I love stuff with character. I often find myself wondering about the person who made these materials, who used them, who held them. I like to think that a part or energy of that person is still contained in these things, and now it’s transferred into the artwork. I’m giving that discarded piece of metal, or that old photograph, a new life, a different life. I am thrilled that I can use this stuff and that it becomes part of my creative process. These various materials are every bit as important to my art making as is a tray of oils are for a painter. For me, walking through a flea market is like walking through a well-stocked art materials store. The flea market is my palette.