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Ugene; I am a circa 30's American, descended from an Irish/German father and an English/Blackfoot Indian mother. At the age of 5, I sensed a struggle coming in my life, not a clue to what it was to be. As the terror increased was sure that God had placed me in the wrong domain. But no such luck, this was it. At six I started working in the local bean fields in the summer for my school clothes and some supplies. Turning fourteen I took a job in a small welding shop on the edge of town as the clean-up boy, parts-chaser, painter, grinder-slagger. By sixteen jumped to journeymen welder. Unknowingly a portfolio had started . At seventeen in nineteen fifty-five, I parked my MGTD, joined the Navy and married my high school sweetheart.. We lived in Hawaii and California, then back home to Oregon, with two new little boys, after my discharge in nineteen fifty-eight. Now twenty coming to a end and settling back into civilian life I started my quest for the wealth of the American dream. Loving to create and build things, I would try home-builder. Schooling myself in the secrets of the home building trade, I bought the empty lot next to the family home and would start my first spec house at twenty-two. After building several homes, many of my design off my drafting board, the economy went to hell in five years or so it was all over. Another lumber/logging targeted regional recession that soon became national. Lost it all but young so bring it on, it did. Now about twenty-eight. Stumbling from job to job State to State trying different projects, searching for something in my range of interest yet to awaken and challenge the creative genius but make the living, by now my family had grown to four amazing babies. I went back to steel fabrication and design. The spark was Log hauling equipment. I had previously designed the Mac Long Logger, parts and protocol of others. I had spent some of my stumbling/learning years in the business. At thirty-three credentialed, co-founding a manufacturing company. Steelcraft log trailers inc. I was the designer/engineering all the products we manufactured. We grew and run smooth for years, but vision and direction of the company was changing and not for me..losing that battle of common scene.... selling ugene left the building,..... 9 months later the company vanished along with my invested treasury. A little down the road the marriage of twenty years was toast, down to one key..... ugene..in parallel universe Greyhounds out. Now thirty-seven with three banana boxes of my stuff, off I went, back to the Islands. looking for something..... at least a job, spending to much time on the beach and with my entrepreneurial spirit working over time, figured it was time to bail. Later back on the mainland, ending up on a boat house in the Sausalito bay with some San Francisco sky line in view and sucking up the ambience of the art scene, some how felt it was ok to be here, at least for now. I liked Zack's in Sausalito. It was the only place in town with good food a bar and a band on the bay. Pleasant the air and charcoal grill there wonders smok'n. One summer's night in walks two sweeties, who knew the one I picked would be my wife, in a year or so we were married. This was by now around nineteen seventy-six and I was closing in on forty. I had found a motivator, reclaimed from one of my passed project I wasn't through with it seems. I named this one "Sundance stove works". My-shapped and formed plate steel, with my-designed/carved patterns to cast parts were the medium of choice. I did some avant-garde here. As the market for wood burning stoves was winding down, in my case it was nineteen eighty-four/five and again time to pack my banana boxes. I had been consumed but now freed of restraint, I was ready to chisel on a new rock. Time had come to direct my energy towards my art and what was left of my life. By now I was getting closer to being a full-time artist. So now I am forty-seven. Stayed in California a few more years, single, doing small construction jobs [again] and Showing my work in Carmel, Santa Rosa, Bodega and Bodega Bay. In need of inspiration and time for my return home to Oregon, I loaded my old truck big dog, dropped off the E and north up the Pacific coast hi-way I went, by then I would be fifty-three. Sixty-three just about sixty-four when I wrote this in 98. I have produced a respectable amount of work and will show what I can on my site. It will be changing adding or subtracting, some will be older and some new stuff but I work alone, so it takes time for me to get all the must does done if you factored in that diagnosed as dyslexic plus attention deficit disorder syndrome. This was a few big chunks, there was a ton more between the lines of my life's look. With not a clue led me here. I haven't attended any art school nor delved into another's technique or there style, but do have my favorites. I hear/know that makes me an outsider, but don't seem to be insane. Magically it comes from inside and wish not to contaminate the personality of my work with another's, a self-taught/stand-alone. In my box. We are a one only.... I am Ugene and will see where it takes me. I seem to find my way alone and so far always pull a new bunny from the hat. What appears on my canvas or emerges from the medium I chose is a part of me. Expecting that the next will be as exciting as the last, I wait until it tells me what it may be as it slides out of hiding. I am pleased and reassured that its ok to go on. Ugene |