On the north side of Kalamazoo, there's a small township called Parchment. Ironically, the largest industry there for many years was a paper mill. That's where my father worked. He knew that my siblings and I could spend hours immersed in drawing and would bring us boxes of various colored paper for our art projects.

The space program was my other chief interest as a kid. While my peers could recite a who's who of professional sports, I could tell you which astronauts piloted which capsules and how many orbits they had logged in the Mercury and Gemini programs.

Studies were augmented by boy scout activities or altar boy duty. The latter required phonetically memorizing Latin responses, sometimes substituted by a mumbled "super-cala-fragilistic" when we could get away with it.

Southwestern Michigan was essentially a rural, agricultural area -- a great place for outdoor adventures. The Great Lakes were nearby and camping expeditions most summers took us farther away into the wilds of nearby Ontario.


The military draft and Vietnam War were in full gear when I graduated high school. The military did offer some attractive advantages (if you weren't in the infantry) and so I enlisted in the Air Force at the age of 20. I was fortunate enough to get my first choice for training which was Russian language. That led to a three year tour in West Berlin. Living in Europe for a few years was a great education including the access to world art collections..

After discharge, I finished studies at Massachusetts College of Art with a concentration in illustration and graphic design. Years later, I was fortunate enough to get additional training at the Art Students League in New York City.

That's a really brief summary of my background. If you're interested, this site also contains a blog and a list of exhibits where some work can be currently viewed.

Thanks for letting me share this work with you.


--RT
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