Although academically trained as a portrait painter, I slowly began to think of paintings not as static experiences but as multi-sensory encounters. Consequently, I learned to machine and code to underscore painting’s play of visual, aural and haptic elements. To make the surfaces of my paintings audible through sound. To choreograph them to move. To enable their compositions to morph and change. To consider, for instance, the Cubist embodiment of multiple perspectives in time and space. The resulting installations, thus, use traditional forms in unexpected ways. But like what first attracted me to paint my contemporaries, the goal remains the same – to express the experience of being in the world today.

Alongside my studio practice, with a handful of friends, I founded TransCultural Exchange as a collective in 1988 (incorporated as a nonprofit in 2002). For over three decades, TransCultural Exchange has produced hundreds of art projects around the globe, helped numerous artists work with their international peers and fostered a greater understanding of world cultures through exchanges, talks and conferences. Around, the same time, I also began working as an art critic and writer, starting first at The Reader and then, The Chicago Sun-Times, followed by numerous other publications. In 2008, I was proud to serve as a named plaintiff in a class action suit (argued in front of the Supreme Court) on behalf of free-lance writers’ copyrights, when many major newspapers illegally sold their free-lancers’ works to online databases.