I
grew up as a typical all-American boy jock kid in Barstow,
CA, a small town in the middle of the Mojave Desert. Why
Barstow? My father, for 32 years, was in charge of highway
maintenance between Victorville and Needles, a vast and
open desert. Pretty exciting, huh? Sports took up most of
my free time – six years of minor league and little
league baseball, and subsequently four years of football in
high school, and some basketball. But my best sport was
tennis. (More on the effects of sports later.) In my senior
year in high school, I finally achieved the status of first
man on the tennis team, which isn’t really saying
much since tennis wasn’t exactly the revered sport in
Barstow. Our tennis courts, by the way, were rough asphalt
that usually could denude a brand new set of tennis balls
in one match.
As the tennis season was approaching, my right shoulder
became quite sore – to a point where it was not
possible to do any overhand movements. The orthopedic
doctor said it was probably from pitching in little league.
In hindsight, this “injury” was one of the
first experiences where life appeared to be nudging me in
another direction. Since we usually spent from 3-4 hours
after school practicing sports, I now had a significant
amount of time to burn.
Moving through life, situations have occurred (often
appearing as accidents or screw-ups) that have influenced
both minor adjustments in my activities or major changes in
life. At the time, the experiences were bothersome or even
traumatic, but in hindsight, they were important positive
turning points.
I
now look at LIFE as the teacher, or more accurately, a
collaborator in our process of growth. This is where the
discussion will get juicy for some people. This is the
realm of faith and spirit. Just as there are innumerable
styles of music that we choose to move with, there are as
many perspectives on faith.
Another
interest that had been taking some of my time was art. My
high school art teacher had mentioned that the (only) art
teacher at Barstow Junior College was quite good, and his
classes would now fit my schedule. So I registered for a
class and showed up (wearing my red and white
letterman’s jacket, of course.) What proceeded to
happen was like a booster rocket under my creative process
and entire life.
Jim Savoie was (and continued to be even after attending
three major higher education institutions) the most
significant creative influence on my life. When he gave one
of his unusual assignments, my response, initially, was to
stand there staring blankly, with no clue of what to do.
Jim would then real off 20 different options. Embarrassed
by my lack of ideas, I soon woke up and began generating my
own creative solutions. Since Jim was a technical and
artistic wizard, working alongside the students and filling
the room with amazing images and objects, anything I could
imagine was now possible to create. Until that time, art
had only been a small ember inside of me, but now, with
Jim’s constant fanning, it had become a bonfire. The
remaining time spent in Barstow, before heading off to UC
Berkeley for college, was filled with art project after art
project – and I soon decided to major in art.
It turned out that Berkeley was an outstanding educational
environment, but not in the realm of art, so I ventured to
nearby San Jose State University with the decision to
explore Industrial Design, since I also enjoyed the
practical side of art.
A profound experience that occurred in this transition was
the roommate assigned to me in the dorms. I had become
passionate about art and design, but I was not aware that
someone could be passionate about rocks. Paul Lillis was
head over heals about geology! I began to look forward to
car trips with Paul where he would tell about the last 5
billion years of history when we drove past a cut in the
hillside. Our current civilization became a only a speck in
the bigger picture of time.
This awareness of the diversity of passion began to
affect my perception of what the world was really about.
Somehow I knew I had a purpose in life because I had this
bonfire inside of me that needed to be expressed. I
discovered that people who didn’t have passion in
their lives often did not understand (or were even afraid
of) someone like myself who was driven to create.
More
words to come ………