Born in New Jersey, I was raised by immigrant parents, a German mother and Ukrainian father, in the waning days of an industrial Trenton.  That blue-collar, multi-cultural upbringing helped shape my views on work-ethic and craftsmanship, as well as community and nature.

My early passion was soccer, and it eventually led to college scholarships, and I envisioned a career in Sports Medicine.  While interning evenings to finish my studies, I worked by day as a landscape stonemason and really enjoyed the labor of working with natural stone.  I began to teach myself to carve stone and, as I made my first sculptures, life took a left-hand turn.

Beginning in the late 80's, I spent 15 years working in art foundries, 10 of which were spent at the Johnson Atelier Technical Institute of Sculpture, which was a hotbed of sculptors from various backgrounds all working hard at a common goal - making sculpture.  The highlight of those years was working on a small crew to create the armature for the Tyrannosaurus SUE, which is at the Field Museum in Chicago.

Shortly after Y2K I took a job as the Sculpture Department Coordinator for Rutgers University's Mason Gross School of the Arts, where I also earned my Masters Degree in Studio Art/Sculpture.  An exciting opportunity had me follow that with 2 years working at the Digital Stone Project in Hamilton, NJ.

Throughout this time, I continued to carve stone and build an understanding of it.  Sharing my passion for stone, I have been teaching at various stone carving workshops, including Marble/marble, Sax Stonecarving and 2Sculpt.

Always restless, I moved to the Southwest in 2008 with my wife, Betsy Bowen, living in and exploring a number of locales, including Taos, Tucson, and now Santa Fe.  I find the desert landscape very inspiring and feel fortunate to live in the canyon country that so heavily influences my work.