A Biographical Narrative

Only sixteen dancers were chosen when it was over. This is the opening line of a short story I wrote titled Jackie and June. It is about my experiences auditioning for, and working on, The Jackie Gleason Television Show in the early 1960s in New York City. How blessed I was to have survived the ordeal of an arduous audition process, as my years as a dancer on this now historical national television show paid for my studies at The Actor’s Studio, which was the primary reason I had come to New York.

My ‘calling’ as an artist began with a performing arts career at the age of five. I had contracted polio the prior year and insisted upon dance training as my form of physical therapy. As the polio waned, I soon began attending the Cleveland Playhouse for acting studies as well as various dance and voice academies. I created a dance school at the age of ten for the little children, hosted a weekly teen television show, and at sixteen created what was then referred to as an “opening act” for leading nightclub headliners such as Tony Bennett, Sammy Davis Jr., Frank Sinatra, and Steve and Edie Gormé among many others. For this twenty-minute dancing and singing performance, I wrote my music score, created original choreography, and designed my costumes.

"Old Ballet Barre"
© 2010

I traveled North America extensively from the ages of sixteen to eighteen. Rather than attend college, I persuaded my parents to allow me to study in New York City for what I wanted and needed most was to perform and study my craft. I was a grateful, aspiring artist, for I was always able to earn a livelihood during those years doing what I most loved.

"The Performance Stage"
© 2010

Eventually, my interest in the performing arts evolved into the visual arts, including photography and painting, as well as writing. I explored and experimented with various techniques in photography and painting, sometimes merging the two but most often retaining the purity of each medium. I was among the first to embrace the digital arts. In so doing, I diligently investigated its potential creating techniques and a ‘painterly’ style with my set of tools: cameras, lenses, natural lighting, and simple-to-complex subjects … all brought into my “dry darkroom” for final work and printing.

My art work, both photography and painting, have been exhibited in solo and group exhibits. Some of my ‘painterly’ photographic series, “on walks with the buddha”, was acquired by the Samuel Dorsky Museum at SUNY/New Paltz. My work resides in the repertoires of private collectors, many of whom commission me to do a special photography series focused on an area of interest to them: a garden, a place they visit, Buddha statues, a stone wall, a person they love … the subject range is as vast and diverse as are the people.

2010: My new body of work, Hello From Across the Decades, is a creative project that represents a convergence of time and place. It brings together my love of fine art photography and my reverence for words. For this project, I am traveling to most of the United States; those places I visited while still a very young dancer and singer and some I visited in subsequent years as an older professional.

I have already begun building the body of work (located on this Web site) on an initial foray to an island off the coast of Southwest Florida and will continue adding to the photographic images and stories as I make my solo drive cross country and back again this fall.

I am blessed to be able to do my work, to do what I truly love, and to share it with those who express interest, support, and are willing to ride along “in spirit” as I document the places, people, and things of this country we call America.