projects.
about.
I am a lighting designer that started out designing scenery. I love to draw, and to teach drawing to young artists. I have written a textbook called Drawing Light in Perspective, as yet unpublished. I'm 41 now, and started in the business as a child actor when I was 9 years old. I've been studying lighting since then. I have a beautiful, funny, and talented wife and two great kids, both boys. We love to go on adventures together. Last summer we went to Rocky Mountain National Park and had a great time hiking in the mountains together.
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I believe in the power of stone age wisdom. My path for learning design went from a study of scenic design, to an in-depth phase of stone tool re-production, and on to lighting design. At UT Austin’s MFA Theater and Dance Department I learned the “Deep Dive” research technique, and how that leads to the best design results. I learned that only through careful deliberation on the fundamental questions of the show, can the research questions be formed. I believe it is through research image investigation that visual elements can become clues to answer the questions that any script is asking through the subtext. Then a design synthesis can occur, where visual clues are joined together to form the structures where the emotional landscape can unfold. The audience then reads these visual clues to make up a “world” where the show can unfold in a meaningful way.
The patience I learned in stone tool making I apply to my theatrical design and drawing projects. For every stone point that is completed, 9 points will break in the process of construction. So, every single step in the process is important, and a moments inattentive action can send you back to the beginning. I believe this kind of iterative process trained human brains to design in 3D, which is why all humans have some capacity to appreciate art.
