Although baseball was my childhood passion, I always considered myself an artist. And by the time I was thirteen I surprised everyone, including myself, with a portfolio of photographs, poems and short stories. I can vaguely recall a weekly column I wrote for the Ramsey High School weekly, "The Ram;" features that I prefer to pretend never existed. Nevertheless, so many artists, like myself, have experienced early forays with some form of journalism. A beginning begins somewhere.

At Manhattanville College I absorbed the Pre-Raphaelite and Eliot traditions well, and my mentor did his best to make sure nothing after the "Four Quartets" was mentioned. So I became a William Blake devotee, and published an essay and catalogue to coincide with an art exhibition that I organized: "William Blake: The Apocalyptic Vision."

Perhaps it was from this Blake tradition ("Without Contraries there is no progression"), that my cross-country photographic travels began. No matter, my near-starving in San Jose, California and automotive breakdown in an Oklahoma blizzard were crucial. Crucial were the travels and mishaps in the sense of "innocence" and "experience" and that imagination had to be used to progress within these states.

Then I became an art gallery assistant in a stately historical mansion. And next, "Unusual Gifts," a book of original poems was published and received rave reviews in New Jersey, New York State, and Philadelphia--everywhere I had friends. Then I worked as a corporate photographer and writer at Hearst Magazines (Good Housekeeping, Cosmo, Esquire, House Beautiful, Town & Country). I then sold printing while taking photographs and exhibiting them in small galleries in New York City, New Jersey and Massachusetts.

And today I am back where I started: recently I opened an art gallery in Western Massachusetts, named Studio 19 which is dedicated to showcasing the talents of young photographers from the around the world whose work demonstrates original ways of seeing. It is called Studio19 as it is inspired by the ground-breaking gallery opened in 1908 by Alfred Stieglitz at 291 Fifth Avenue, NYC.

My photography studio is also located within the gallery which is is in Eastworks (the renovated Stanley Home Products factory ), a large brick building that sits by a river, at the base of Mount Tom in the Berkshire Mountains of Western Massachusetts.

This is the view from my photography studio: