A drawing from 2005, one of a series called Mapping Existence.
I’ve spent a lifetime around art — teaching it, designing it, selling it, and making it.
Funny thing: becoming a full-time artist later in life may be the hardest chapter yet.
Still working.
Still becoming.
What keeps you doing what you’re doing?
Another map made years later, still wrestling with some of the same questions.
This stiletto mark represents ArtChangesLives(Dot)Com, but it also represents me. Its stiletto symbol meaning is deeply personal.
As a child, I loved crayons, paper, toy service stations, record players, cameras, and yes, even dolls. I was drawn to making, imagining, and worlds that did not always fit neatly into what was expected.
As I grew older, especially in my pre-teen years, I recognized more and more that I was the other, and I learned quickly that fitting in seemed safer than standing out.
But coming out changed that.
Years later, in graduate school, while working on a project about how shadows may have shaped my life, the image of a stiletto presented itself to me.
The high heel is power, presence, and confidence. Sharp. Elegant. Strong. It takes up space without apology.
Cyan and magenta speak to identity, fluidity, courage, and becoming. They also carry the language of design, color, and creative life.
I am a gay man, and I have always known there is both masculine and feminine within me. I do not see that as conflict.
What I most admire is the strength of women—their resilience, grit, and what they endure. That strength shaped how I understand beauty, power, and identity.
So this mark is both banner and mirror.
It stands for the work.
And it stands for who I am.
Be who you are.
Stand in it.
Without apology.
For me, the stiletto symbol meaning is about identity, strength, and standing fully in who I am.
Sometimes a symbol chooses us before we understand why. Has that happened to you?
Years ago, I showed my students at Minneapolis College (MCTC) a video by Paula Scher on serious play vs. solemn play, and I find myself returning to that idea again.
“Serious play is about letting go and allowing things to happen. Solemn play is about controlling the outcome.” — Paula Scher
Years ago, I showed my students at Minneapolis College (MCTC) a video by Paula Scher on serious play vs. solemn play, and I find myself returning to that idea again.
At the time, I understood it pretty simply. Serious play felt open and exploratory, a place where not knowing was part of the process. Solemn play felt heavier, more controlled—something that closed things down.
But now I see it differently.
I think solemn play comes after serious play. Serious play is where things begin—where something opens, and I don’t quite know what I’m doing yet. But then something starts to form. A shape, a direction, a presence begins to emerge.
That’s where solemn play enters. It feels more like a kind of holding. A kind of listening. A willingness to stay with what’s emerging without trying to resolve it. It requires attention.
It’s almost like the kernel forms in serious play, but it begins to take root in solemn play.
Maybe the movement isn’t one or the other. It feels more like a quiet rhythm back and forth—between letting go and staying present, between discovery and care.
Where I am now isn’t about trying to get back to serious play.
It’s about learning how to remain in that space where something begins to take shape,
and then… the conversation begins.
“The work is done when it has nothing more to say to you.”
— Robert Rauschenberg
I made an appointment to have ten pieces framed — thinking about when a work of art is finished.
And then I canceled it.
At first, I thought I had chickened out.
That I didn’t have the courage to follow through and see how they are received.
But the more I sat with it, the more I realized — that wasn’t quite it.
I’m not ready to separate myself from the work.
Not because I’m afraid of losing it,
but because it doesn’t feel concluded in the way framing suggests.
When I imagine putting the pieces behind glass, something in me tightens.
And right now, they don’t feel done.
They still feel open and accessible.
They’re still in conversation with me —
and I haven’t figured out their path. Maybe there isn’t.
If they’re framed and set aside, even carefully, they become removed.
Not just physically, but creatively.
And maybe that’s what I was really responding to.
Not fear of letting go —
but resistance to closing something that’s still open.
There’s a kind of pressure in making art to declare things finished.
To move them forward.
To let them go.
But sometimes the more honest thing
is to stay with the work a little longer.
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See more in Walking Reflections.
Lately I’ve been thinking about what remains of us.
Not reputation.
Not a big story.
Not even the full face.
Just trace.
A shadow on concrete isn’t the person, but it proves something stood in the light.
I keep circling the idea that existence doesn’t require constant visibility. When awareness drops away — sleep, silence, the spaces between — there isn’t spectacle. There isn’t narrative. And yet something remains.
Maybe that’s what a shadow is.
Not the full reality.
Not the whole person.
Just proof that contact happened. That light met form.
Not monument.
Existence.
A human being is only breath and shadow. ~ Sophocles