Biography

I am the product of a couple of generations of Central Texas Germans, born and raised in New Braunfels, near San Antonio. After graduating from North Texas State University with a degree in History, I joined the Air Force as a way of getting out of the state and seeing something of the world.

After tours in Tennessee, Thailand and Okinawa, I came back to Texas. In the everlasting quest for a meaningful career, I took up map making and spent the next several years working for various environmental consulting companies in Austin.

For my fortieth birthday, I gave myself a clay class at a city funded facility a few blocks from my home. After becoming addicted, I took classes at the Southwest School of art and Craft in San Antonio, which offered a wider range of courses and experience firing kilns. After buying a few acres west of Austin, I built a small house and studio where I work and feed deer.

Artist Statement

I make what I do in clay because I want to. Talking about the why and wherefore usually means lying. What is true one day may not be the next. What you swear by one day you curse the next. As with all things in nature, a state of flux is the rule and means all is well. The focus of my work is architecture. I look at buildings in the wild and in books. They get jumbled in my head and sorted out by my hands. The buildings started as boxes. Lids became roofs, feet and chimneys appeared and things go on from there.

 

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