NEVADA WORKS

(4 Galleries)

1978-2012 

When I think of Nevada, it brings to mind with a smile the state song Home Means Nevada. In 1978 I arrived in Carson City as a young conceptual artist with few studio skills. My first job was at the local high school teaching 9th-12th grade art.  It was a perfect example of on-the-job self-training and for more than a decade most of my creative energy went naturally into teaching. The ample time off which the position provided was spent hiking and discovering the Great Basin and Sierras. Slowly I began making temporal works with regional materials: twigs and grasses, bark and footprints in the sand. As my self-confidence grew as a teacher, I began formalizing my artwork.  The “Planet Eaters” series is a good place to begin this archive but certainly wasn’t the beginning of my art-making focused on the environment and the human era. For that you would have to travel back in time to Mr. Brown’s 4th-grade class where I grew the biggest radish.