Growing up squarely in the middle of middle class America, I had a stronger than average fascination with drawing, coloring, and lettering. I distinctly remember a moment in second grade, while drawing a jet airplane at the kitchen table, when my mom asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. Without hesitation, I answered, “An artist.” And then she told me I had to pick something else, because there was no way in the world I would be able to make any money or support a family as an artist. I thought about it for a few seconds, and then told her I’d be a pilot.

After riding my bike to the same Catholic elementary and junior high school for eight years, I began to ride the city bus to a small high school on the edge of the inner city. There, my artistic ability was quickly recognized and praised by the art teacher and the student body. As a freshman, I won an award in the all-school art exhibit. When I was chosen to create the high school musical program cover, I saw it as an opportunity to share my budding commercial artist talent with the general public. Sadly, that school closed after my freshman year, and I transferred to a school five times as large, where I was suddenly anonymous. I took only one art class my sophomore year—ceramics—and my two-dimensional art skills went unnoticed; it seemed the students and teachers had already settled on their established artists-in-residence. I was drawn to the logic of computer programming, and art became something I did on my folders and notebooks, on the signs at my family’s grocery store, and in the back room there, where one of my older brother’s friends became my art mentor.

On the day I left for Madison, alone, to register for college, I told myself and my parents that I would major in Computer Science. When the moment came to declare my major, I asked the admissions people about the possiblity of taking art classes as a Computer Science major. They told me it was sometimes difficult for non-Art majors to get into advanced art classes. About as quickly as I changed my life profession from artist to pilot back in second grade, I switched my major from Computer Science to Art. I ultimately received a B.S. in Art from the University of Wisconsin in 1991, with a focus on graphic design, from a department focused on fine art. At the UW, I was introduced to assemblages, artist’s books, and collage—my media of choice.

I returned to Milwaukee and managed the family grocery store, where I combined my lettering and drawing skills with a new interest in books and collage to create the world's first ever grocery fanzine, The Sphere, in 1993. In the years that followed, I opened a picture framing shop next door to the grocery store. A regular browser by the name of Jerry Karidis revealed to me that he was a graduate from the Layton School of Art and was also a collage artist. He helped hang the exhibits at the Charles Allis Museum of Art, which was just around the corner from the grocery store. One day he came in and found me working on a series of collages on the framing table. He apparently liked what he saw. When he invited me to show them at the museum I remember being both stupified and flattered, but most importantly I was grateful for the validation that my collages were worthy of exhibiting at the Allis. Since then, I have been actively exhibiting my work in a variety of settings, both by invitation and through my own arrangement.

Over the years, I have always listened to the voice in my head. Some call it listening to your heart. Regardless of how you phrase it, I have come to the conclusion that children would be better served if we encouraged them to look within to discover who they are, rather than look at the world and then choose want they want to be. Some of us are artists—not because we want to be, but because we are.

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