Salmon fishing on the Columbia River.
When I should have been milking cows on the farm, I was drawing behind the barn. Art was in me. As a kid, school didn’t make sense. In college, I got to study art and things finally came together! I enrolled in a Professional Art Degree from Spokane Falls Community College (SFCC). Suddenly, I was studying design, painting, history, appreciation, even lapidary: 8-12 hours a day and I loved it! In the early 1970’s the vets were just getting home from Vietnam and enrolling in my same classes. I was awestruck! I’d never seen so many talented people in my life. They were battled, worn and scarred. Their impact stays with me even today. They smoked pot and had seen life and death, I was just a small town kid. And, when in art appreciation I learned that Karel Appel said, “I paint like a barbarian in this barbarous time,” I connected the dots; these Vets were telling me about their experiences and expressed it in their artwork!
Then I discovered there was a Picasso and I realized I could do anything! I had no idea there were guys like Warhol, Johns, and Rauschenberg and no idea one could think like that! I copied by hand a book about Alberto Giacometti - a Swiss painter/sculpture - because I couldn’t afford the book and I wanted it! So page by page I copied the book. I was hungry. Teachers taught me to paint with Cadmium Red Light and Hookers Green; it sang! SFCC was an incredible place in the early 70’s and it changed me; the teachers, the art, the vets, the smell of linseed oil and sketchbooks with rock and roll blaring in the background.
Since then, I’ve spent a lifetime studying, teaching, crafting, and experimenting with my art. I earned an MFA (painting) from Washington State University, BFA (drawing) from Fort Wright College of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary, and Professional Art Degree (Advertising Design) from Spokane Falls Community College. My career began as a graphic designer with markers, x-acto’s, paste-up and the smells of photo chemicals and melting wax. The handmade came first … it still does. I earned a professorship and was honored to became the founding Director of the School of Design at South Dakota State University. Brookings is my summer home and I’m trying out Arizona’s winters.
Exhibits
• Americas, purchase, Northwest Art Center, Minot, ND 2018 • South Dakota CAA, invitational, Dahl Fine Arts Center, Rapid City, SD 2015
• Paper in Particular, juried, Columbia College, Columbia, MO 2015
• Americas, purchase award, Northwest Art Center, Minot, ND, 2014
• SD College and University Invitational, SDAM, SD 2013
• Northern National, juried, Nicolet Gallery, Rhinelander, WI 2013
• New Works, exhibition award, Kreft Gallery, Ann Arbor, MI 2013
• Home Furnishings and Art for Your Apartment, SDAM, Brookings 2012
• 25 Target Gallery, juried, Torpedo Art Factory, VA 2011
• South Dakota Governors 5th Biennial, SD 2011
• Northern National, juried, Nicolet Gallery, Rhinelander, WI 2010
• Creative Adaptive, juried, Kreft Gallery, Ann Arbor, MI 2009
• Endless Imagination, traveling, South Dakota, 2008-09
• Northern National, benefactors award, Nicolet Gallery, Rhinelander, WI 2008
• Works on Paper, juried, Long Beach Foundation, Loveladies, NJ 2008
• National Juried Exhibition, Sylvia White Gallery, Ventura, CA 2008
• Classicism, Modernism, and Beyond, juried, Gallery RFD, Swainsboro, GA 2008
• Art of the Plains X, juried, Plains Art Museum, Fargo, ND 2008
Education
MFA, Washington State University
BFA, Fort Wright College of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary
Professional Art, Spokane Falls Community College
AA Advertising Design, Spokane Falls Community College
Collections
South Dakota Art Museum, South Dakota State University
Northwest Art Center, Minot State University
Brad and Molly Eliason
Mary Perpich
Scott and Nancy Hodges
Jennifer Gessel Family
Randy and Tammy Clark
Mary and Russ Bjerke
Positions
Founding Director, School of Design, South Dakota State University
Head Department of Visual Arts, South Dakota State University
Professor, South Dakota State University
Assistant Professor, Montana State University
Art Director, Logan Graphics
Advertising Designer, Alpine Advertising
Advertising Manger, Baker Democrat Hearld