You want my statement?  To know my process?

I have been building towers since the infamous 9-11, wooden towers that pierce the sky, glass towers that depict infinity in it’s many guises, and, more recently, towers that are self portraits.  To further my dream of what might be I’ve built miniature human habitats on Mars.

I’ve made some shields, some masks, one down on it’s luck figurative piece.  Much of the work is illuminated, warmed from within as is our planet, as are many planets.

I’m an assemblage maker from the Nevelson School of Thought.  As all assemblage makers, I’m guided, or perhaps, dictated to, by materials.  All of my work is crafted from industrial scrap:  from wood through to motorcycle parts to glass, and through glass to light.

In the last several years I’ve found I am also a teacher.  What joy!  I have been teaching assemblage basics, as well as abstract basics, to 500 pre-school children through the 14 schools of the Sonoma County Head Start Program.  I’ve also had 6th, 7th and 8th grade Special Ed students at Willowside Middle School as well as Excell summer students at Sonoma State, Chops Teen Center kids, and children in the Maycama Golf Course Activities Room all of whom have been learning advanced assemblage techniques, using advanced materials and tools.

So that is the process.  Here is the statement:

It seems to me I get one shot at this incredible miracle-experience of life, so I make of it what I can.  Sometimes I respond to the bewilderment of it all, the beauty, the death and suffering, the art, the music.

Sometimes I respond to the wonder of it all, the jazz, the motorcycles, turquoise and silver, the blinding marvel of love in my life.

Lord Buckley taught us  The Naz instructed his crowd of love-kiddies to ”raise your arms!  Raise them higher!  DIG INFINITY!  And they dug it.”  Because Lord Buckley and Billy Holiday and Charlie Parker could dig infinity,  I  Can  Too!

So, these towers, these infinity light sculptures I have built, are about that.  I have taken what my heart sees as the best from the lessons of my teachers, the sculptors, jazz musicians, painters, dancers, storytellers all, and I’m giving back       the light.  In the tower piece, “Last Train From Overbrook”, I’m giving the light back to James Moody.  And to Lady Day, The Prez, Bird, Marcell Duchamp; I’m giving light back to all the Certifiably Outside human wonders of our age.

Signed:  Charlie, aged 69

Starts Kindergarten in the fall.  Mostly
relates well with peers.  Does bite, though.
Drools, too.  An innocuous little boy who shows
promise.