All the technique in the world doesn’t compensate for the inability to notice
— Elliott Erwitt​​
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I've always felt that I was born in the wrong era. Lost in the luster of black & white, the browns of the 18th century, and the fashions of the victorian age, I was destined to wear vintage britches.

My wardrobe was often, in fact, fashioned from the retro shelves of the Salvation Army second hand store. Conveniently located in the University Mall, in a rough neighborhood of what I knew to be St. Paul, Minnesota, it was stretching the budget of my mothers pockets. Pockets that held the wages of a floor washer, a vacuumer, the window cleaner, and table wiper. Humble wages of a house-keeper.

The camera was as much a part of my hand as family functions were part of my youth. Large families lend themselves to shelves of portrait albums. Our portrait shelf, nine characters deep, left me, as the book end.

Every artist can attest to the difficulties of networking. As a youthful artist the struggle to obtain subjects that would co-operate, well, led me to eventually investing in a tottering tripod, and capturing images of myself alongside the mix of urban and forestry scapes of Minnesota land. Today, these portraits are among my strongest pieces.

Creativity was fabricated in aisles of shoulder pads, off colored chekers, and oddly painted plaids. The experimentation, the fail, fail, and fail stystem found me, arms like metal racks, plump full of hopeful closet additions, and wishes of numerous outfits, this pant, those shirts, found me at the mercy of the harsh reality of needs, and a strict cost evaluation. In those rows of rugged black and ragged brown boots, I became a thrifty vintage fanatic.

My career in these fine arts began at age five with a monster capture making machine, the kodak film point & click throw away camera, located at every major Walgreens, near the door.

In the last decade my portraits (fashion, commercial, and personal) have transformed from passion to purpose, precision, and exploration, but what hasn't changed (I'm proud to say) is the essence of what captured me at five, and played out in stories through the lens, honesty.

This is an intimate story of two odd lovers. A nickel and dime tale. An adventure of portraiture, raw, untouched by sets of purchased lights, and barren studio walls. Alive in natural light. A soliloquy of one camera and one eye alone, hand in hand, venturing through life’s mysterious unknown.

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