Most of this work is from the 1990s and early 2000s, and the pieces are consistent with my current work, especially the “Abstraction,” “Shrines,” “Toys Gone Wrong” and “Fun With Bones” sections.

ArtGolf was conceived in Oregon in the 1980s – originally as a croquet course. When I moved to LA I recruited other artists to each make a miniature golf hole and we staged a course. LACE asked me to do an ArtGolf show for them in 1989 and it garnered a lot of attention including a big Wall Street Journal article. I continued to make courses for a while, but all the copy-cat shows convinced me to switch my focus to ArtCars. In the mid 2000s I revived ArtGolf for the Maker Faire. It too was very popular, and very well executed as it was designed and built by my designer niece, Jillian Northrup, and her architect husband, Jeffrey McGrew.

The PhiloMart section shows work I made in the 1980s while living in Oregon & Los Angeles and showing at the New Zone Gallery and the NorthWest Artist Workshop. The concept was an Oldenberg-type store display with toy and drug departments. Barbie & GI Joe dolls transformed into adult counter-culture archetypes, and illegal drugs were packaged like blister-pack consumer items. James Luna selected me for the 5^th LACE Annuale in 1990 on the basis of this work.

The big paintings were a short-lived experiment. While I lived in LA in the late 1980s and early 1990s I had a huge studio in a bad part of town that encouraged large pieces.

It was fun to gather the evidence of all this work over the years.