I came to New York to study art history but the creative vibe of the top floor loft at 98 Bowery awakened my latent artistic ambitions. At first I tried painting, but when Mike Malloy exposed me to a new form of art rooted in exploring human psychology, I became an instant convert. Over the next decade I became a “conceptual artist” actively creating and exhibiting mixed media wall pieces, videotapes, and staging performances in America and Europe. Almost all of my art focused on people, their lives, thoughts and feelings. Most of the pieces involved the actual participation of people in the making of the art. Participants were asked to respond to words, make simple drawings, take photographs, or provide hand-written captions for photographic portraits. Some of the pieces dealt with the mundane realities of daily life; other works explored hot button issues like sex, money, religion and politics. They walked the thin line separating art and life. Because many of the participants were people I knew personally, the art was also a record of my own life.
