Creativity is my centrifugal force, my rapturous predilection. As early as I can remember, I wouldn’t leave the house without my crayons. This led to receiving a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Communication Arts at the University of North Texas. Advertising and editorial art became my beloved vocation while art and music were my unceasing elation.

A love of reading led to my interest in combining art and publishing. For three years I was an editorial staff illustrator for the daily newspaper of New Orleans, The Times-Picayune. Being an artist who was illustrating the news made me feel like I was on the pulse-beat of the world; this close encounter with journalism jettisoned me into a new level of heightened consciousness. I joined the World Future Society and started voraciously reading esoteric philosophy. The resultant exposure to visionary science and spirituality opened up new conceptual visions that transformed my artist’s viewpoint forever. An altruistic reverence toward higher consciousness elicited in me a motivation to use my artistic skills for higher good.

This was also the time when video arcade games made their appearance. The games were located at a corner grocery, which became a gathering place for kids. As I watched them, I saw that they possessed a level of hand-eye coordination that had deteriorated among grownups, so I decided I’d better learn how to do this too. Pledging myself to spending no more than four quarters per day, I adopted a game to concentrate on, called Hyperspace. I was the only adult who ever played these games at the corner grocery and I became adept at it. Gaming impresses me with its potential to achieve a far higher good than shooter games are capable of providing humanity.

After four years in New Orleans, I followed a dream and moved to upstate New York. My interest in the work of Carl Sagan the astronomer was what attracted me to Ithaca, where I consequently met him and was a videographer at an event at his home. My love of books led me into the book publishing industry there, into involvement in many projects for several small, progressive publishers. This business was the perfect union for me of art and consciousness.

Books have remained my passion as a designer. One of the goals I would most value in pursuit of a masters degree would be to develop & prepare some of my personal book projects for publication. The other great influence in my development during my ten years in the pastoral solitudes of upstate New York was meditation, along with Tai Chi and the study of eastern & western spirituality. I’ve continued in these disciplines and studies for the past 21 years.

For the past two years, I’ve been working as a graphic design teacher at Westwood College in Dallas. A number of my graphic design students have expressed an interest in learning how to meditate, so for awhile I led a sitting meditation practice at my school for both faculty and students. One of the possible directions I could take my masters degree studies would be to develop a strategic teaching plan for integrating meditation into schools.

While living in New York, I was involved with the local community cable television network, where I worked as co-producer on a show called “Paths To Spirituality.” We videotaped at least four talks by the Dalai Lama, whom I met and meditated with. These were in the final days of analog video. One of the interests I might like to pursue among my masters studies would be to update my video skills by learning digital video and applying it to themes of personal, national and global evolution.

Music is the perfect counterpoint to art, so I would like to integrate my own compositions, my own playing, recording and editing of music into my masters projects. Taking time to focus on this goal within a masters degree program would be very desirable, especially if I had access to a teacher capable of helping me fine-tune my digital music mixing and mastering skills. I also would like to explore further the uses of ambient sound.

The one greatest realization I have had as an artist is that art’s most valuable means of service to society is its ability to expand consciousness: the visuals, the images aren’t nearly as important as the ideas they are capable of invoking. This is my artist’s mantra. My dream is to find ways of expressing higher ideals through the visual arts for promoting non-violent conflict resolution, environmental sustainability, earth-friendly energy & technology, community-building, gender equality, unity of race, recyclable, non-toxic materials for commerce, hybrid vehicles, and the generating of new consciousness in support of these ideals and designs.