I was born and raised in South Bend, Indiana.  My interest in art was kindled by attending events at the South Bend Art Center and while enrolled in fine art and mechanical drawing classes at John Adams High School. 

Following graduation from high school in the spring of 1957, and prior to enrollment at Illinois Wesleyan University in the fall of 1958, I served a yearlong apprenticeship as a key line artist in a South Bend advertising art studio while enrolled as a part-time student at Indiana University’s branch campus in South Bend.

As the recipient of an unexpected scholarship, I was admitted to Illinois Wesleyan University as a fine arts major beginning with the 1958 fall semester.  Being a studio major, my areas of concentration were painting and printmaking. 

After graduating from Illinois Wesleyan with a BFA degree in the spring of 1962, I served the six-month active duty portion of a six-year U.S. Army Reserves military obligation.  

Following my release from the Army in February of 1963, I spent a year and a half employed as the Assistant Client Service Director of an advertising agency in Elkhart, Indiana. 

During the 1964-66 school years I was enrolled as a graduate student at Cranbrook Academy of Art.  I graduated from Cranbrook with a MFA degree in painting and printmaking in May of 1966. 

My initial teaching experience occurred teaching drawing classes as a TA at Cranbrook, and drawing and two-dimensional design courses as a visiting instructor at Oakland University and at the University of Notre Dame. 

My full-time teaching career began at Albion College during the 1964-65 school year.  There I taught classes in painting, drawing, two-dimensional design, and American art history.  My conversion from painting to photography as my preferred creative art form began as the result of being the co-recipient of a Great Lakes Colleges Association Faculty Development Grant during my last years at Albion.  The addition of photography classes to the department’s curriculum occurred as a second consequence of the GLCA grant.   

I joined the Ohio Wesleyan University faculty beginning with the fall semester of the1972-73 school year.  From 1972 through the conclusion of the 2007-08 school year I taught classes in painting, drawing, two-dimensional design, American art history, and photography as a tenured member of the fine arts faculty.  During many of those same years I served as both department chairperson and exhibitions director.  From its founding in the fall of 2002 to the conclusion of the 2015-16 school year, I served as executive director of Ohio Wesleyan’s Richard M. Ross Art Museum. 

In my role as exhibitions director for the fine arts department and later as the director of the Ross Art Museum, I curated and helped mount well over 200 exhibitions by students and professional artists. 

First as department chairperson and later as museum director, I created and helped build the university’s Permanent Teaching Collection of more than 3,000 works on paper by artists of both national and international stature.

Since my retirement as an employee of Ohio Wesleyan University in June of 2016, I am finally able to devote much of my time creating a new series of photographs while traveling from border-to-border throughout the states of the Rocky Mountain West.  And after years and years of promoting the artwork of both students and professional artists in my roles as teacher, exhibitions coordinator, and museum director, I’m taking great satisfaction in finally being in a position to create and promote my own artwork.

Resume can be found here.