Q. What is your connection with Fresno City College?
A. My friend Randy Brico used to teach ceramics there. I went to graduate school shortly after him at San Jose State, and we were friends there

Q.How did you start in the Art Industry?
A. I wouldn’t call it an industry; art is more of a lifestyle in a way, but I always did art. I guess it just always felt like the thing I was best at and enjoyed the most, and so ever since I can remember, I planned to be some kind of artist so I couldn’t really say specifically when.

Q. What is the motivation for your art pieces?
A. There is a raw motivation to entertain people. Every person has a desire to be understood and to express themselves. I think it’s almost a natural human trait and to share the things you are excited about, also to express ideas that I think are important.

Q. What would you like to tell people through your art?
A. Being alive is a really amazing thing that we should stop to reflect on and try to understand and celebrate.

Q. What is your favorite creation?
A. My favorite creation would have to be a piece called “Autonomous” which is a life sized sea turtle hybrid creature which has a bio dome on its back and is based on a number of different myths. I’m really interested in the mythology of different cultures and I take mythological stories from different cultures and often combine them in my work; so it’s based partly on a myth of Native Americans, a Hindu myth and the story of Noah’s Ark. I’m taking these mythological ideas and putting them into modern context, so this piece is sort of an environmentally based piece.

Q.What is your favorite piece from Beneath the Real?
A. “Providence of Scarcity”. Conceptually, the motivation for it is a concern for the wellbeing of the environment and rhinoceros being an indicator of the faith of the environment because of them being killed and people trying to harvest their horn and emphasizing the rugged beauty of the rhino by exaggerating skin and creating floral embellishments on the skin and trying to create a human connection through the piece by making its eye look very human to provoke empathy from the viewer.

Q. What inspired “Who Pulls the Strings?”
A. It’s based on a book called “Self Comes to Mind”. The idea of the book is that if we are composed of billions of cells but yet have a singular consciousness, then which one of those cells is in the driver’s seat and which is the one that you call yourself and determines the decisions you make and how they come together to create your consciousness.

Q. What’s next in your career?

A. I just got a studio; a life work loft in a warehouse that I’ve been making a lot of work in, and it’s kind of the beginning of a new stage in my career and in my life. I’m just continuing to create work and continuing to explore what is like to live in this and age and continuing to educate

Q. What advice would you give to an aspiring artist?
A. Work really really hard, be as authentic as you can and form genuine relationships with the people in the art community.