Studio Sale through November 15

I regularly use my work to benefit other people and causes. I want to ramp that up right now.

From now through November 15, I will give 50% of all studio sales to groups working for peace and social justice. I want to make this impactful and accessible. There’s a lot available.

Here is a list of who I have supported so far.  Funds from this sale will further lend support to these or groups like them. At the end of the sale, I will provide buyers an account of all the groups funded.

If you want to personally donate half of the purchase price to a particular group (i.e. for your tax purposes, or to a group you prefer), get in touch and we’ll work it out.

Let’s work together towards positive and lasting change.

New Oviette song: "Nightshades"

My band Oviette’s fourth single “Nightshades” is now available on Bandcamp. Streaming soon on Spotify.

Forty, For You -- book and album release

My 2020 project “Forty, For You” is documented and available in digital and physical form.

45-page hardback book and digital music download

PDF book and digital music download

In early 2020, driven by a desire to establish a contemplative experience of space and time within the format of an often endless social media scroll, I created the project "Forty, For You." Beginning on February 26, I began to make a suite of 40 paintings on paper, which were accompanied by 40, 1-minute original ambient musical compositions. On Instagram, these could be viewed as a still image while the music looped to the viewer's desired length. The pieces were created and released daily through April 11. I chose the contemplative 40-day season of Lent as a chronological framework.

When I began the project there was little awareness in the US that a pandemic was developing. On March 5, I spent the day in New York seeing gallery shows with artists friends. There was a degree of concern, but nothing like the full-scale panic that set in just days later when stay-at-home orders began in Philadelphia.

Unfolding as it did against the backdrop of the global coronavirus pandemic, with hundreds of millions of people sheltering at home for months, the significance of creating a contemplative time and space for myself and others became incredibly important in a way that I could not have imagined.

The artworks were made and photographed in my studio. I often worked days ahead because of the uncertainty of being able to travel to the studio.  The musical compositions were made daily at my home, extemporaneously and in response to the artwork. Most often I was working on the music very early in the morning. The recordings feature a wide array of guitar sounds, some electronic instruments, and occasionally my voice. There was also A LOT of technical detail...editing the images and music, and then combining them as short videos and getting them uploaded.

The process was a personal lifeline for me in a way that my art has never been before.  And I was incredibly humbled to hear from others that the daily image and minute of ambient music was something they, too, relied upon daily in their own personal way.

Instagram stats tell me the pieces have been viewed nearly 16,000 times. Incredible! 

The original 10" square paintings on paper were made in triplicate. (3 sets of very similar but unique works.) I will keep one of the sets for myself but the other two sets are available. Please contact me if you are interested in exhibiting or purchasing the series.

Essay in "Field Language," published by Palmer Museum of Art at Penn State University

Field Language—The Painting and Poetry of Warren and Jane Rohrer

It was an extraordinary honor to be invited to contribute an essay to this publication, which has just been released from The Palmer Museum of Art. The artist Warren Rohrer (1927-1995) was the single biggest influence on me as an artist. In addition to my essay, one of my works is reproduced in the catalogue as well as one of my photographs of a rural location that served as a place of inspiration for Warren Rohrer. I continue to relate personally with Jane Rohrer and the rest of the family.

Field Language presents the work of an extraordinary couple who together left the rural lifeways of their Mennonite upbringing to go “into the world” to create forms of modern art that reflected on the places and culture they came from. Published on the occasion of a retrospective exhibition devoted to the working relationship between abstract painter Warren Rohrer and his wife, poet Jane Turner Rohrer, this sumptuously illustrated book explores the Rohrers’ painting and poetry in relation to their biographies and to the nature of modernism and modernity.

The artists, poets, and historians contributing to this volume present a variety of perspectives on the Rohrers, situating their work within the context of modernism, the changing agricultural landscapes of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, and the aestheticization of local craft practices. Through the work of these two highly original and creative artists, Field Language invites readers to consider relationships between global art movements and local visual cultures, issues of land use, the sustainability of rural communities and cultures, and our own relationships with agricultural landscapes, seasonal change, labor, and human need and desire.

In addition to the editors, the contributors include Christopher Campbell, Steven Z. Levine, Nancy Locke, Sally McMurry, Janneken Smucker, William R. Valerio, Jonathan Frederick Walz, and Douglas Witmer.