MY LIFE

---

In order for us to exit Brussels as refugees, a sponsorship was needed to secure passage to any country that would have us. Fortunately, a distant relative in New Rochelle, NY agreed to support us with a sponsorship, and we were able to secure passage on the last ship of refugees headed to the US. On arrival, we found we would not be able to remain in New York, and had the chance to select California  as our destination for settlement. I had 4 years to pursue my art studies before WW2 caught up with me.  

 I was drafted into the army as a resident alien in 1943 . I was soon shipped out to Iceland over a submarine -infested ocean, a  US Weapons Depot at that time.  To make a long war story short, I was discharged in 1946 and went to live with my older sister’s family in Long Island, NY.  Because of my military service, I was able to become a US citizen. 

Under  grants of the GI Bill after the war, numerous art schools were opening up in New York and I enrolled to further my studies. It was during this time that I met Meryl, an aspiring modern dancer and sometime artists' model. She was posing for life–sketching classes at my sister’s home, and sketching from live models became a passion for the rest of my life. After a brief romance in New York, Meryl and I drove to Los Angeles and took up living in a trailer under a walnut tree in  my mother’s back yard.  During this time in Los Angeles I also  continued art studies at Otis Art Institute. At Otis, I served as Student Body President,  cultivated friendships with the sculptor Gordon Newell, the illustrator and drawing instructor Joe Mugnaini, and nurtured my lifelong friendship  with the artist Hans Burkhardt. It was Burkhardt, who had built his own house in Laurel Canyon, who inspired me to find a lot and build my own house a stone's throw from his. 

I started building in 1949. When the house was finished and Meryl and I were newly wed, we rented it out and left for Mexico. In Mexico, I was able to avail myself of time left for studies under the GI Bill. 

While I attended classes at the Escuela de la Esmeralda in Mexico City, Meryl continued to work in modern dance. It was in Mexico we befriended the dancer Merce Cunningham.  Fortuitously, it was in school in Mexico that I  began to further  my skills in  print making –  a specialty which later became my sinecure in college teaching.  When Meryl and I returned to Los Angeles,  I was recruited by June Wayne to be trained, along with others, as a technician printmaker in the revival of stone lithography – a program for which she had secured a Ford Foundation Grant. It was called the  Tamarind Institute of Lithography. The Tamarind training, where artists were recruited to make lithographs in the Tamarind workshops, led to the crucial development of the rest of my career.It was there that I met Robert Hansen.  As a prominent Los Angeles artist, he had been selected to produce a  suite of prints in collaboration with Tamarind printers.

At that time, as chairman of the Occidental College Art Department,  he encouraged me to apply for a position to establish a printmaking curriculum within their Art Department. I applied, and - lo and behold -I secured the position.  I was at Occidental for 5 years, followed by a stint teaching at CSU Northridge  pending appointment to a permanent position at CSU Dominguez Hills. The position at CSUDH lasted until my retirement as ProfessorEmeritus in 1985. During my tenure at Dominguez Hills, I was also actively involved with the Los Angeles Printmaking Society, and served that organization of printmakers as president. I exhibited frequently in LAPS and other invitational and juried shows around the country.

After retiring,  although I continued for some years drawing from the model, my creative energies became focused on landscaping the 16 contiguous hillside lots that Meryl and I acquired one by one over our years in Laurel Canyon, and on the literary expression of my socio-political perspectives that resulted in the publication of my first book..."Not for Drones."