Why did you become an artist?
Ultimately, I don't know that I had a choice. I have always enjoyed, and often preferred, seeing from a different perspective. To me that is an essential ingredient in any art.

What is your life history as it relates to being an artist? What key life experiences affected your direction in art?
Each of those periods above was key. Each has art forms in it. As a farm kid I learned to respect tools and see the beauty in natural forms. As a geology professor I had to coherently present three-dimensional ideas verbally and graphically. As a geologist I have had to take limited available information and consider multiple interpretations to define an exploration target, and suffer humiliation if proven wrong by hard data from a core drill. All three tend to be solitary activities requiring accepting responsibility for your own actions. Working with stone has many of these same elements.

How has your training as a geologist influenced your sculptural work?
Geological thinking often involves visualizing three-dimensional forms from only two-dimensional data such as the shape of hidden rock bodies based only on surface mapping. Because of that experience it is no great leap from a flat sketch to carving in the round. Similarly, understanding how tilted or folded rocks will be expressed as patterns on a hilly land surface differs only in scale from knowing how banding will appear on a carved surface. A stone sculptor can learn all of this but I had a bit of head start. Some of my pieces come directly from my work in paleontology and crystallography. Oh, and I know a whole lot of rock and mineral names - most of which are utterly useless to a stone sculptor.

Why is art important to you?
Art gives me nonverbal ways of expressing or stimulating ideas, even ideas that may not have been a part of my creative process. Stone carving in particular provides the pleasure I take in working with my hands. I tolerate (usually) my keyboard and monitor but I find more comfort in using tools and techniques that have changed little in several millennia.

How does your art reflect your philosophy?
I see value in recognizing limits and working within them rather than against them, not to the point of crushing spontaneity and creativity, but extracting meaning and expression while remaining true to the medium. Rather than seeing the physical properties of stone, hardness, rigidity, weight, and color as restrictions I see them as challenges to depicting softness, flexibility, lightness, and polychromy. And yet it remains stone. Life has limits. Now, what can you do within those limits?

How has NWSSA influenced your work as an artist?
When I first started to carve stone there were no classes available in the area so I picked up a ball-peen hammer and a cold chisel and started making chips from a chunk of marble I found while doing fieldwork. My first Camp Brotherhood symposium was a revelation. In one place I found access to stone, tools, techniques, and ideas, and most importantly, people eager to share all four. Fortunately I met the people before I saw their portfolios, otherwise I may have slunk away, completely intimidated, dragging my ball-peen hammer behind me. Instead I discovered ordinary people who were also extraordinary artists. I hadn't known that was possible.

Describe your art in your own terms - focusing on your stone carving.
I do both representational and non-representational pieces although the boundary may become blurred with some. The human form continues to fascinate me with its curves, textures, and expressiveness. Typically I carve figure fragments to emphasize a body part or a posture rather than to identify a specific individual. I try to represent an ordinary natural body, carving forms that are neither gravitationally impossible nor anatomically improbable. My non-representational, or at least non human figurative, work ranges from geometrical constructs, to fossil shapes and archeological artifacts, to complete abstractions developed to emphasize patterns or structures in the stone itself.

How do you develop your ideas (by direct carving, drawing, modeling, etc.)?
Depending on the subject matter, I may work from photographs, sketches, clay or plaster maquettes, natural objects, or just a vague idea.

I am aware of your excellent photography. How has photography enhanced your sculptural efforts?
On one level photography is a tool. I've yet to find a model who will hold a pose, without clothes, for several days or weeks while I hurl stone chips around the studio, so I work from photographs of the model instead. I take measurements from the photographs to maintain proportions and landmark positions. In later stages they are very useful in refining surface forms. On another level, without the distraction of color, black and white photography sharpens my perception of form, texture, light, and shadow, the same qualities I want to develop in stone. For exhibition photographs I often use low angle lighting that brings out subtle body topography providing inspiration for more sculpture. The spontaneity of the model and the variety of poses possible in even a short photo session generate many images to consider for carving.

What are you trying to express in your art?
The richness of contrasts. Beauty in the ordinary and in the human form, especially with shifts in viewpoint. The contrasts may be texture: smooth or polished surfaces juxtaposed with coarsely carved or broken stone; or between subject and medium: soft human forms represented in hard material, or apparent twisting of rigid stone. To some there is no longer originality in representing the body but I view it much as I view music. I may play or listen to a piece of music many times, but each time there appear nuances I haven't experienced before.

Last year I completed two non-figurative pieces that were particularly satisfying. "Circle Sine Wave" is a disc of banded white marble with a rim in the form of a sine wave. I chose a banded stone and oriented it so the resulting hills and valleys would be emphasized by the color pattern. It is basically a very simple form with every diameter being a sloping straight line, but it required careful layout work and patience to carve successfully. It has three-fold symmetry, that is, there are three hills and three valleys mirrored on both sides, but from various angles its shape and color pattern appear to generate the two-fold symmetry of a rectangle or the four-fold symmetry of a square. The effect is especially apparent as the sun angle changes throughout the day or as the disc is rotated on its pivot pin.

Circle Sine Wave Vermont white marble, granite base 14 inches in diameter

I originally conceived the second piece, "Ice Flame", as a contraposta female form carved in modified bas relief on both sides of a slab of pale blue marble. After roughing out, following a gentle curve in the banding, I lost faith or courage, or both. A year later, having seen it in the garden every day, I visualized a simpler flame shape following the banding. It has been an unexpected pleasure to have people see it as a woman, in spite of its title and abstractness.   Ice Flame British Columbia blue marble, steel base 60 inches high Private Collection

Do you work part- or full-time as an artist?
At present carving is an evening and weekend activity. Full time work pays for stone, tools, and health insurance for those times when I drop a half-ton block of marble on a finger.

What stones do you prefer?
Although I have worked in many different stone types most of my work is in limestone or marble. I like Utah oolitic limestone and any of several lightly figured marbles, even some strongly colored ones.

What is your working process - do you do one piece at a time or do you have several in process at once?
Typically I have two or three pieces in progress, usually at different stages from roughing out to finishing.

What tools do you use?
Anything that gets the job done: hand, air, electric; often all three. I usually rough out with a diamond blade in an angle grinder or tile saw but with some stone or some forms I can remove material faster with a hand hammer and point or pitching tool. I do much of the form development with two-, three-, or four-point claw chisels, both hand and air, followed by abrasive discs or rasps. I may do finish work with needle files, diamond discs, or sandpaper.

Where do you exhibit your work?
In the Seattle area I am represented by Nancy K. Jordan. I have participated in several NWSSA shows in the region and in several other juried shows in Oregon. And there are always pieces in our backyard garden and bamboo grove.

How much work do you complete in a year?
I have been completing four to six pieces a year for the last several years.

Do you teach art?
No, but I regularly lecture at several universities to sculpture and architecture classes on stone types and their working characteristics.

Have you been influenced by any particular artist?
Gian Lorenzo Bernini and Antonio Canova and their exquisite treatment of anatomical detail; Gustav Vigeland and his portrayal of all ages and emotional states expressed by the human body.

What scale or size do you work in?
I usually start with blocks between 25 and 400 pounds. Neither my studio, nor my vehicle, nor my back can deal with much more. This allows me to carve torsos up to life-size.

Do you have a favorite scale?
Life-size for human forms and whatever the stone will bear for abstract works.

How is your work area set up?
Several years ago I built a 12 x 18 foot detached studio. I don't have street access to the studio so all stone comes in by hand truck. A traveling chain hoist runs the length of the studio but my carving tools are all mounted overhead or on the wall at one end so the actual carving area is about 8 x 10 feet. I do wet work outside on a gravel pad. Since I also use the studio to photograph models and finished pieces I have to sweep and mop it out frequently. It doesn't develop the rich dust patina typical of a stone studio but it's a very comfortable place to work.

What have been your satisfactions in your life as an artist?
Producing a tangible expression of an idea or thought. It is very satisfying to see a person look slowly at a piece of my stone sculpture and then touch it - even more so when I see him or her bring another person over to do the same. It pleases me to generate a response, to engage, to offer a different perspective. And developing social contacts with friends whose experiences, and even ways of thinking, are often far different from my own. It's good to stretch a mind.

What obstacles and challenges have you overcome?
At times the most difficult thing to do is to keep carving. Some pieces progress smoothly, others seem to stall. I lose confidence or lose control of proportions and I begin to doubt my abilities. Sometimes it takes weeks or even months before I can return to such a piece. So far I have left no piece unfinished, although a couple are still taking extended rests.

What are you looking forward to (goals, commissions, new ideas, flights of fancy)?
I always welcome additional commissions. I anticipate that new ideas for stone will grow from my photography. Other ideas turn up on their own and I add them to an ever-growing stockpile. So far the ideas are far ahead of my stone pile. Flight of fancy? A solo show of stone sculpture and figure photography.

Finally, I just want to say...
Never carve a flat horizontal surface on stone sculpture. Sooner or later someone will set a glass on it - probably of red wine.