i have been creating large scale sculpture for public places since 1975, in 27 different countries.
Introduction
Hudson Sculpture - Art & Sculpture Career
My art and sculpture career has progressed from previous incarnations carving religious icons in Tibet and designing sacred spaces in India, working close to the land in ancient Scotland and bringing my fellow Native American peoples together in the Idaho region - I was born in Montana and lived my first five years in Casper, Wyoming. My art-works today bring together all these and more recent experiences, feelings, thoughts and techniques.
Since we supposedly choose our parents, I chose a father who was a writer, a violinist, a professional magician, a hydro-geologist and a builder of dwellings. My mother was a weaver, a writer, a teacher and an activist in the public realm. These influences inspired me and were stimulated by our living in and traveling all over the world throughout my life. The first overseas adventure was to Saudi Arabia in 1951 for three years. During these times in foreign lands, where my brothers and I had free rein to explore, we either lived near to or visited such architectural and monumental structures as Baalbek, Petra, the Acropolis, Stonehenge, Machu Pichu, Chartres, ancient kivas and vast natural environments of desert, mountain and jungle. All these experiences, adventures and inspiring peoples have formed me and my career as a sculptor of works of art for public environments.
As a youth I built all manner of things and also painted a bit. Actually ""making art"" as a photographer began in adolescence. I started painting seriously in college and then segued into constructing sculpture. After two years, I transferred to the Dayton Art Institute, where I explored other areas of creativity but focused in on sculpture. After two and a half years at the Institute, wanderlust returned! I traveled to Senegal, West Africa where I worked in the bush for my Father for six months. I then made my way up through Spain to Stuttgart in early 1969 where I had a very productive work-period at the Kunst Akademy. These sculptures were all welded steel, with some found parts, most created, with a bit of an influence from David Smith. After perhaps six months there I had a serious motor cycle accident so I felt it was time to head back to the States.
I worked for a year as an assistant to sculptor Charles Ginnever in Vermont (1969-70), passing another productive year there, learning a lot about the life of a professional sculptor. From Vermont I went to California to study at the California Institute of the Arts for two years, the very first years of that school. I received both my Bachelor and Master of Fine Arts degrees while there. This was also a very creative sojourn, where I created sculpture on both large-scale and small, as well as installation. It also allowed me to study T'ai Chi Chuan with Marshall Ho'o, sculpture with Lloyd Hamroll, happenings with Allan Kaprow and art history with Paul Brach.
The intensity of life in L.A. was quite enough and I needed a return to nature, so I went to work in a gold mine in the northern California Sierra Nevada Mountains for two years, where I constructed much of the processing and mining equipment and a few sculptures. This period of time reinforced my commitment to my sculpture, so from the mountains of California I went to the High Plains of New Mexico for a time, exhibiting a large aluminium sculpture installation at the Museum of Art in Roswell. I then returned to home-base in the forests of Yellow Springs, OH, where I set up a studio and began my life as a professional sculptor. This early period included some teaching at university, my first professional commission in 1976 in Columbia, Missouri, and first "" % for Art"" project in 1979 for MetroDade at the Public Library in Homestead, Florida. Since then, I have traveled the Nation and the world creating large-scale sculpture projects primarily for public environments.
In 1985 my wife and creative partner, Debbie Brush Henderson, and I moved into the new sculpture studio that we built with Father's help. We were married by my Mother, then the first woman mayor of Yellow Springs. In the latter 90's I helped Debbie create a wide-ranging collection on the history of the man's hat, which as a museum exhibit has venued at three art museums. This was the result of her doctoral research in costume history with the Union Institute in Cincinnati, supporting her teaching of costume at Wittenburg University. It has also resulted in four beautiful books on this subject, designed by Jane Baker of Wild Goose Press. The most recent is ""HAT TALK: -Conversations with 20th Century Hatters"".