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Table of Contents

Childhood

• 1951 – First Mark — A toddler, absorbed in drawing lines in the sand, wanders too far and experiences fear, creation, and being found for the first time.
• 1952 – The Rear Stairwell – The rear stairwell of my grandfather’s house becomes the crossroads through which every world of my early childhood was entered.
• 1957 – On the Edge of Life – At eight years old, standing close to danger and adult urgency, I begin to sense how fragile life can be — and how quickly it can change
• 1954 – A Boat in the Basement — My father built a 17-foot speedboat in our basement and refused to explain how he planned to get it out.
• 1954 – Courthouse Steps — Hurricane Carol flooded Providence, and my father launched the boat from our driveway to rescue people downtown.
• 1955 – The Ski Jump at Twin Rivers — My father and his friends built a ski jump on oil drums, and soon the road was packed with people watching the show.
• 1957 – Don’t Tell Your Mother — Micky taught me in small steps until my father let me take the boat out alone—on one condition.
• 1959 – Hands, Fear, and Becoming

Dr Teeter Days

• 1977 – Confronting the Fear of God

Cranbrook – Late 70s: Graduate School

• 1978 – A Car Named Boat (With Bea Lea)
• 1978 – The Studio in the Dark – Arriving at Cranbrook under cover of night, a literal fall into darkness becomes an unexpected initiation, as a hidden studio reveals itself
• 1978-80 – The Cranbrook Years of Falling -At Cranbrook in 1978–80, relentless critique, reckless risks, public failure, and literal free-falls collide, turning humiliation and confusion into the raw materials that forged my artistic courage and sense of direction.
• 1978-79 – Meeting Lynn Ball – In the charged, dreamlike world of Cranbrook, a chance conversation at a basement bar unfolds into a partnership shaped by shared curiosity, gentle challenge, and the slow discovery of what collaboration—and love—can become.
• 1979 – Allagash: Two Acts of Bravery – What begins as a reckless summer adventure becomes a quiet test of love and survival, when Lynn’s calm courage in the Maine wilderness reveals the depth of her strength and the trust that would bind us together.
• 1079-80 – Before the Climb: Shoshana – In a season of uncertainty and divided loyalties, an unexpected relationship with Shoshana becomes a mirror of vulnerability and self-recognition, revealing a version of myself I wasn’t yet ready to keep.
• 1980 – The Great Ant Escape: A lesson in live art -A graduate-school experiment with 500 ants, a suspended glass world, and an ill-fated faith in gravity spirals into chaos, improvisation, and the accidental beginning of a decades-long practice in live art.

Minneapolis – Early 80s: Finding a Community

• 1980 – From Skyline to Studio – Arriving in Minneapolis with everything I owned rattling in a red van and my most fragile ideas riding in the back, a kept promise and a handed-down key transformed uncertainty into the first true foothold of a life in art.
• 1980 – 87 – Lynn Ball and the Birth of Artpaper – Out of shared conversations, failed grant drafts, and a belief that artists could build what they needed themselves, Lynn and I helped shape Artpaper into a steady, practical voice that knit Minnesota’s visual arts community together.
• 1980 – Forecast: Another Door Opens – Through open sharing, collective risk, and a room full of artists willing to meet honesty with generosity, I found a supportive community at Forecast that became the source of lifelong friendships and creative belonging.
• 1980 – How I Met Aldo Moroni – A meeting on a park bench opens into hours of conversation, late nights, and an enduring friendship that would become one of the most formative artistic partnerships of my life.
• 1981 – Art Park, Climbing Omega – A vertigo-inducing climb at Art Park becomes a charged reckoning with love, choice, and uncertainty, crystallizing the truth that an artist’s life is shaped by stepping onto unstable ground and trusting the climb anyway.
• 1981 – Inner Reflections: The Road To Meaning – Through failed ideas, stubborn labor, and the unexpected demands of keeping something alive, I stumbled from anxious concept-making toward a practice rooted in care, responsibility, and the conditions that allow life—and art—to endure.
• 1981 – Roanoke, the Near Miss – A cross-country installation turns into a brush with catastrophe, revealing how quickly confidence can give way to consequence—and how responsibility in art extends far beyond the work itself.
• 1982 – Forecast Timeline – Invited by Forecast to fill an overlooked stairwell, I built my first timeline installation—discovering how movement, memory, objects, and narrative could merge into a form that would quietly shape my work for decades to come.
• 1982 – 1982 – The Year of Becoming – Juggling survival work, Artpaper deadlines, collaborative artmaking, and late-night conversations that quietly turned into salons, I began to understand that identity isn’t chosen all at once—it’s assembled through care, failure, and shared purpose.
• The 80s – The Rise and Fall of the Downtown Gallery Scene (As I Remember It) – Before it was named or remembered as “magical,” a dense, affordable, bar-centered downtown ecosystem quietly allowed artists to live, gather, and take risks—until the conditions that sustained it inevitably shifted.

1983 – The Timeroom Installation at MAEP

• Crossing the Threshold – Entering the MAEP exhibition Journeys and beginning a collaborative installation with Georgiana Kettler.
• Building Time – Constructing a room that treated history, furniture, and environment as a physical experience of time.
• The Living Table – Creating a live ant installation that required care, attention, and shared responsibility with the viewer.
• The Woman Who Remembered Time – A conversation that opened space for memory, trauma, and intergenerational listening.
• What Remains – Reflecting on what the Time Room made possible—presence, compassion, and shared humanity.

1984-85 – Plato’s Cave in NYC

• Jerome Opens the Door – The Jerome Emerging Artist Fellowship becomes the threshold, marking the moment when ideas and opportunity begin moving faster than doubt.
• Where Ideas Come From – An idea forms not in isolation, but through urgency, conversation, and a growing sense that something essential needs to be said now.
• Building the Prototype – Before New York, before the deadline, the work must first be tested in private—physically, mentally, and emotionally.
• Carving the Cave – Time compresses as the idea turns into matter, and the body learns what the mind has already committed to finishing.
• A Glimpse of the Room – In the middle of installation, a brief night inside New York’s mythic glow offers calibration rather than distraction.
• The Dirty Work – With no professionals and no safety net, the piece is finished through improvisation, stubbornness, and a surprising amount of dirt.
• The Ants Arrive – Life enters the cave, bringing with it a logic and intelligence that extends beyond human intention.
• The War in the Window – When order collapses, the installation reveals what living systems have come to teach this time.
• Meaning Over Time – An artist reflects on how a single work, made as a warning in 1985, keeps resurfacing as the world accelerates and conditions begin to rhyme.

1986 – A Year in Motion

• Cold Morning in the Studio – A grant letter arrives on a freezing morning, finding me living illegally in my studio, surrounded by unfinished ideas and the quiet thrill of possibility.
• Carrying Doubt As Ballast – Success accumulates, but so does a lifelong counterweight: doubt, listening, and the slow understanding that reflection is not weakness but balance.
• What Do You Do With Momentum? – Money, freedom, and choice arrive all at once, and I respond the only way I know how—by trying to do everything, and learning what that costs.
• Flying Lessons – I give myself a private gift: learning to fly, a brief experiment in three-dimensional freedom that reveals both desire and restraint.

1986 – Italy

• Sunrise at Piazza del Popolo – Unable to sleep after arriving in Rome, I wander alone into the dark city and watch the sun rise, deciding—without words—to take it all in.
• Hill Cities – Winding roads lead upward into walled towns where time seems to reverse, and Lynn begins falling in love—with Italy, its people, and its living past.
• Florence: The Fat Baby – In the gardens near the Pitti Palace, a stone figure catches my eye and quietly plants the seed for what will become the Rat-Buddha.
• The Island Dinner – A table for two at the tip of a narrow island becomes a meditation on how Lynn taught me to live—with intention, beauty, and care.

1986 – Back in Minneapolis

• The Confessional Took the Stage – On the eve of opening night for The Balcony, a confessional becomes the center of a wild, unscripted gathering that changes everything.
• Gloomy Sunday – Naked in a hot tub at a conference center, with Billie Holiday playing and pressures mounting, pleasure and danger begin to blur.
• Fever and Decision – With a 103-degree fever, I listen from my loft as a board plans my future below—and decide, at last, to walk away.

Second Life Days (2008 -2012)

• The Sandbox Girl — A long, ordinary day ends with a login—into a world that isn’t real, and a person who won’t leave my mind.
• The Rule of Trust — In Second Life, grief becomes a rule: don’t attach, don’t trust—until one message breaks every rule.
• Our Land, My Campfire — She builds on my land like she already belongs there. I try to name us. She refuses.
• The Warrior Angel — A romantic field trip turns into a warning: this world can change you fast.
• The Spell in Odyssey — In our home in the sky, her voice breaks through—and I almost break the spell.
• The Raven Arrives — The first month in Second Life teaches me a brutal lesson: the sky is never truly ours.
• The Falling — In the sky above Odyssey, our home disappears—and we fall toward the land below.

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Memoir Story Seeds

Childhood

• The Snow at the Back Door
• The Rose Trellis Gate
• Cutting Down the Trellis
• The Hidden Photographs in the Eaves
• The Lost Jackknife in the Floorboards
• The Beauty Shop in the Garage
• The Whale on the Toilet

1987

• Kienholz Comes to the Studio — Edward Kienholz visiting my studio during his Walker Art Center exhibition, anchoring a specific moment in time and work.
• In‑Collaboration: Eleven Artists (Bethel College) — Participating in a collaborative exhibition centered on dialogue, process, and shared authorship.
• Hiring David Hall — Bringing in my close friend to silver‑solder the twice‑life‑size wire cage for the Buddha figure.

1988

• Building the Truck‑Bed Deck — Constructing a wooden platform level with the truck rails and turning it into a rolling campsite.
• Waking Up in a Firing Range — Discovering at dawn that we had camped overnight in an active firing range.
• The L.A. Conference — Attending an art event in Los Angeles where an offhand conversation opened a major door.
• Santa Barbara Invitation — Being invited on the spot to join a four‑artist live‑art exhibition.
• Building Fish Breeder All Winter — A winter of focused labor leading to the Santa Barbara installation.
• November – received notice of the List Residency at MIT

1989

• Rat Buddha’s Long Lineage — The Buddha installation as an intimate core work with multiple lives, venues, and meanings, deserving its own extended series.
• Feb – Dinner at the Director’s Beach House — A luminous dinner overlooking the ocean, dolphins visible through the windows, shared with senior figures in contemporary art.
• Feb. – Fish Breeder as Relationship Ending — Installing the work as the relationship with Patrice quietly unraveled.
• April? – Met Lida Bravo –
• May – MCAD Gallery (Rat‑Buddha) — Installation of Rat‑Buddha at MCAD, Minneapolis.
• Sep-Nov – Mind/Heart Balance, List Visual Art Center, MIT, Boston, MA.

Resume items to help me remember dates and stories.

• 1988 – McKnight Foundation Fellowship
• 1989 – Mind/Heart Balance, List Visual Art Center, MIT, Boston, MA,
• 1989 – Eight McKnight Artists, MCAD
• 1989 – Minnesota State Arts Board Career Opportunities Grant
• 1989 – MIT Residency, List Visual Arts Center, MA
• 1990 – Diverse Visions Grant
• 1990 – Forecast Public Art Affairs: R&D Stipend
• 1990 – Minnesota State Arts Board Fellowship
• 1990 – National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship
• 1990 – Sugar City, Northern State College, Aberdeen, SD
• 1991 – Glam Slam Exhibition, Prince’s Nightclub, Minneapolis, MN (Buddha)
• 1991 – Timeline Bookcase, The California Building, Minneapolis, MN
• 1991 – Garden Buddha, The Colombian Consulate, Minneapolis, MN

New York City Days

• 1993 – Convergence VI, Providence, RI (Six Figures)
• 1994 – Art & Cyberspace: Test Drive The Future, at HERE, NY
• 1995 – Visualizing CyberSpace, Curator, 426 Broome Street, NYC, NY
• 1996 – Land, in collaboration with Robbin Murphy and GH Hovagimyan,426 Broome Street, NYC, NY
• 1997 – PORT: Navigating Digital Culture, List Visual Art Center, MIT, Cambridge, MA

Seekonk Days

• 1998 – VRML Minneapolis Sculpture Garden, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN
• 1999 – Convergence XII, Providence, RI (Cement Tree)
• 2000 – DeCordova Annual, DeCordova Museum, (Under the Volcano)
• 2001 – Boston Cyberarts Festival, Cambridge, MA (Dance of the WaterSpiders) 2001 – Convergence
• 2001 – Providence, RI  (Dance of the WaterSpiders)
• 2002 – Cement Tree, Seekonk Public Library, Seekonk, MA
• 2002 – Complexity, Dorsky Museum, New Paltz, NY (Eight-Bit Ant Farm in collaboration with Guy Marsden & Jon Schull)
• 2002 – Convergence 2002, Providence, RI (Serpent Performance)
• 2003 – Complexity, The Federal Reserve Gallery, Federal Reserve Building, Washington, DC
• 2003 – Convergence 2003, Providence, RI (Dressed Serpent Performance)
• 2005 – Artbots, Dublin, Ireland, (The Beave)

2nd Minneapolis Days

• 2013 – Three Blind Mice, California Building Performance during Art-A-Whirl.
• 2015 – Body And Machine –A Group Exhibition of Kinetic and Interactive Art, Lost in Translation.
• 2016 – Body And Machine –A Group Exhibition Kinetic & Interactive Art, exhibited Time Machine,
• 2017 – ArtBot Performance at Mini Maker Fair, and at Bloomington PlaceMaking Festival

California Building Days

• 2019 – The Truth Is Out There – One person exhibition California Building Gallery
• 2022 – Five Urban Cattails, Richfield MN, Three Urban Cattails, Richfield MN
• 2022 – Skybox, JROW NE Minneapolis, MN,
• 2022 – Urban Ties, Timber & Tie Building, Northeast Minneapolis
• 2023 – Eden Prairie Grass, Paravel Apartments, Eden Prairie, MN
• 2023 – Looking Glass Grass, Aster Apartments, Coon Rapids, MN
• 2024 – Garden Grass, Minnetonka 2024 – Urban Ties 2, Downtown Minneapolis