JACK THE ARTIST:

The flickering blue flame from the gas stove gave off just enough light to read. Kansas farms had electricity by the 1950's, and with a flip of a switch, the room could have been illuminated; however, when the rest of the family had gone to bed, I turned off the lights throughout the house. In the firelight, it was easy to imagine myself as Abe Lincoln reading by his fireplace, or perhaps Jeddiah Smith beyond the fringes of the frontier, fingering his crumpled maps. I read The Deerslayer, The Last of the Mohicans, and The Pathfinder, frayed pages packed with valiant heroes, cruel villains, Indian raids, and stories of courage, rescue, love and death. I saw Natty Bumppo, not in "the drab hues of reality”, but as one who ran full speed alongside Chingachgook through the dense green pageantry of books. However, it was not just the stories that illuminated my childhood nights. The illustrations of NC Wyeth and Howard Pyle are what made the stories truly memorable.

In that room in front of the fire, the images came night after night to assault my being with painted warriors and leather-clad frontiersmen. It was a world within a world, and they passed through mine as easily as a tomahawk through a pumpkin. I kept reading because I loved the fire and the illustrations, and how they carried me beyond the plains where a cold wind that smacked of snow dulled the edges of my childish heart. The books and pictures filled the gaping holes of my education. I read them slowly, the firelight flickering on every page.

I can say exactly when I became a writer, but being an artist was something that just evolved over a lifetime. As a boy, I was interested in art, and on the farm it served as a diversion and an outlet to pass the time when my younger brother, Roger, and I were not playing in the creek. We enjoyed the pleasures that Boy's Life brought to our farm with the illustrations and the cartoons that offered entertainment in addition to our comic books. I copied characters in pen and ink on a bed sheet from Sunday "funnies" such as Dick Tracy, Dagwood and Blondie, Smilin' Jack, Joe Palooka, Red Ryder, Little Beaver, and others. Mother saved it as Mother's do, and today I still have it, tucked away in a drawer, seventy years old and growing older. When I become famous, my grandchildren can take it on Antiques Roadshow and when told it is worth thousands, they can say, "Well, I never would have guessed."

I had a hideaway in the loft of the barn, and there among the bales of hay, I copied photographs of places I knew only through the pages of Collier's Magazine. I sent cartoons to Boy's Life but nothing ever became of them. World War II was on, and it was the comic book era. I grew up infatuated with comic book heroes, Superman, Batman, and the Flash, but Terry and the Pirates was my favorite. I could say that Milton Caniff gave me my first big start being an artist without either one of us ever knowing it. During the war I copied Walt Disney squadron insignias onto the footlockers Uncle Homer sent home from the Pacific and painted them on anything that would stand still, even the seat of Gerald Harding's motor scooter.

It has been a long way from the comic books, Cub Scout kites, a junior high comic strip, high school art class, the cartoon for uncle Bob's water truck, the Marine Corps company emblem, designing our college mascot, holiday backyard art shows, and illustrating book covers, to the one-man- shows in Beverly Hills, Laguna Hills, Sedona, and Scottsdale, and it has been one great adventure, a lifetime filled with the kind of events that make great memoirs.

Through most of my life I had two careers - teaching history during the week and being an artist on weekends. Somehow it worked. With each passing year, my art career expanded. Then I took a fifteen year hiatus to write but never entirely left the art behind. When my neighbors from London asked if I had any paintings at home left over from my gallery shows, I decided it was time to resume my art career.

I like to fill my artwork with mystery and symbolism. I draw inspiration from Native American connections, folk tales, legends, mythology, fairy tales, fantasies, Japanese kimono design, rock formations of Lake Powell, Kabuki drama, the ocean, and historical photographs: images that symbolize connections with our past as well as our future. I prefer the enigma of the abstract, the unfinished line, suggestions instead of definitions, an ever-changing combination of elements that are ever evolving so viewers can discover something new today that they didn't notice yesterday.

I choose to be a teller of tales, a singer, a philosopher, a magician, a master of make believe, a guide to spiritual connections that reveal mysterious worlds far beyond self-imposed boundaries. I desire to give voyagers a new way of seeing their world, travel to a place where they encounter their dreams, open the inner sanctum and fly. I wander through the Museum of Time searching for images that will do this. Sometimes I get lucky.

JACK THE ATHLETE:

For me, growing up on the plains was all about running. I ran in the snow and ran in the rain. I ran when the first bite of fall was chasing summer from the lake and ran when the sky was dark with thunderheads building in the north. I ran in winter with my face covered in a mask and on summer days when it was so hot it seemed as if someone was holding a blowtorch to my face. I ran on days when my shadow stretched far in front, with a tiny head and long slender legs, and on days when I had no shadow at all. Each mile that I ran gave me an edge, and each day I pushed the envelope, and each day I came closer to the dream I had when I was a ten year old boy - being a champion runner. I loved it, and for most of my life it defined who I was. I was named to College of Emporia, Kansas, Athletic Hall of Fame for my track achievements. I have participated the last thirty years in Arizona Senior Olympics and have been state 400 meter champion in my age group a number of times. I continue running and competing today.

JACK THE AUTHOR:

In addition to my art career, I am a photographer, poet, historian, and currently on the artist roster of the Arizona Commission for the Arts as a facilitator of workshops throughout the state on writing life stories.

A third generation westerner, I bring together a myriad of experiences of growing up in the West. As a teenager, I hitchhiked across portions of the West, worked on a cattle ranch in Colorado, chopped cotton in Arizona, and followed the wheat harvest, driving a truck and combine from Texas to Montana. I have been a lifeguard, carpenter, construction worker, insurance salesman, YMCA youth director, boxer, scuba diver, a college Hall of Fame athlete, a U.S. Marine, a high school history teacher, and a participant in the Sun Dance in North Dakota for the past twelve years. My poetry has been collected in two books (Change in the Weather, and Late Night Lanterns published by Orchard House Press), three chapbooks, eight anthologies, and have appeared in over one hundred literary journals. I am currently working on a trilogy of the Great Plains, part history of place, part oral history, and part lyric memoir that recounts my family's generational experiences, as well as my boyhood and adolescence on the Kansas prairie in what might be seen as the waning years of the American frontier.

RESUME:

Born:
Kingman, Kansas October 28, 1934

Education:
Ph.D. Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona
M.E. Wichita State University, Wichita, Kansas
Robert E. Wood School of Painting
B.A. College of Emporia, Kansas

Selected Exhibitions:
O'Brien's Art Emporium, Scottsdale, Arizona • Gallery Wall, Phoenix, Arizona • Frame Guild Gallery, Wichita, Kansas • Arizona Lighting, Phoenix, Arizona • El Prado Galleries, Sedona, Arizona, Santa Fe, New Mexico • Towne Plaza Gallery, Mission Viejo, California • Towne Plaza Gallery, Beverly Hills, California.

Selected Collections:
Arizona Bank, Phoenix, Arizona • Valley National Bank, Phoenix, Arizona • Thunderbird Bank, Phoenix, Arizona • Best Western Motels, Phoenix, Arizona • United States Marine Corps, Camp Pendelton, California • Steck-Vaughn Company, Austin, Texas • College of Emporia, Kansas • Union National Bank, Wichita, Kansas • Santa Fe Railroad, San Francisco, California • Greyhound Corporation, Phoenix, Arizona.