From age 5 to 12, we lived in Corbin, Ky., the inner-city of Louisville, Ky., the migrant farming Northwestern, Ohio town of Ottawa, and then a three year stint in Campton, Ky., in Wolfe County, a poverty stricken mountain town and area just south of Red River Gorge, one of the most beautiful places in America. My adolescence was spent in the Dayton, Ohio area.

The only art I was exposed to as a child outside of popular American culture of the 1970s was gospel soul, Appalachian and doo-wop music. After getting religion at age 28, my father took his family on a 10-year odyssey of life in poor mountain coal mining towns, migrant worker villages and inner-city environs to pursue the Southern Baptist ministry.

I grew up cast as an All-Star defensive lineman, and later, US Army Combat Engineer. It was a long journey to where I am today as an artist. I've been a newspaperman, early e-zine publisher, ad-man, singer, songwriter, painter, school bus driver and labor union leader, among other things.

My and fellow songwriter Brian Pelfrey's musical project Drexel has received kudos from around the globe for its musicianship, lyricism and unique sound, garnering fans as diverse as former Tom Waits sax man Ralph Carney, and modern American songwriting genius Chuck Cleaver, the influential and globally respected fluxblog, as well as a small but fanatically loyal following of fans from across the globe.

I live and work in Dayton, Ohio, where I am able to draw upon inspiration from America's post-industrial Urban/Appalachian ghetto wasteland on a daily basis.When I'm not creating art, I stay busy with my job as a Dayton Public Schools bus driver, where I proudly serves with honor as the Vice President of the local bus drivers union, #627, Ohio Association of Public School Employees Union, parenting two daughters, two dogs, two cats, a
garden.

To me art is music is words is colors is images is sounds is feelings. Maybe that's why I've immersed myself different forms of communicative art. I have no formal art education, and the visual pieces I create are for the joy that is experienced by me in each piece - from the subject and characters of the piece, which come from a thought, an observation, or perhaps a conversation with another, to the implementation of the concept, to the nuts and bolts like painting, etc...

My bedpan art, which seems to garner the most attention of all the things I do, is just a perfect metaphor for life and my philosophy towards it. You can make anything beautiful with unleashed creativity and love, even a
bedpan.

All of the pieces that I paint are from some second hand source.There are lots of boards in piles of garbage all around the city of Dayton as the process of post-industrialism continues unabated in my city, almost four decades strong. I can always find something to paint on around here, and plus, Dayton has a reputation for being a giant Midwestern forgotten industrial slum, and to be honest, I feel my city, and cities everywhere, need a beauty injection.

A hypodermic full of love, if you will.