How it all started!

Well this is a long story that started in 1968…okay not quite though that was the year I was born. I have always been creative and though I never did great in school I always was top of the class in art. In 1984 my art teacher Mr. Art Posi (yes my art teacher was named Art) assigned our class to draw a basic line drawing and then make 5 copies of that drawing. We then needed to color each in a different style (monochromatic, Warm tones, Cool Tones etc). The idea was to show how color can change a picture. The drawing I did was just a series of circles and lines (very 1984 bold abstract) Mr. Posi gave me a perfect 10 and then wrote next to the perfect 10 that he had not given a perfect 10 on any assignment in his entire career as an art teacher. After high school I continued to come back and ask for advice on different problems I was working on and how to do them. I remember going in to see him for advice on how to make a reflection in a watercolor look more like it was glass. During this visit he pushed harder then ever to try and get me to go into art as a profession. I finally told him that I did not wish to spend my life poor so I was not going to go into art. I became a sales man and found over the years that as a good salesman there is a lot of creativity you can explore in the process of selling.

Through the years I had some people in my life tell me that they did not think I was as good at art as I thought I was and I guess I let those negative thoughts in. I did not do much with art for a long time but on the 24th of July 2008 I spent the day walking up and down main street in Park City, UT. My wife and I went into a lot of different galleries and looked at a lot of art. She really wanted me to do something creative and kept pointing to different artists work and saying “you could do that”. I really did not feel inspired by any of the styles that day until I saw another artists weaved copper work.

I have worked in roofing sales in Park City, Utah for almost 20 years. Many of the roofs I sell have either copper flashing or are entirely made of copper so there is a lot of scarp around the shop for Nielco Roofing and Sheet Metal. When I saw the copper weaving I realized I had an unlimited amount of copper that I could use to create art and well I realized that I would be able to do some really interesting things weaving copper.

When I got home that night I found a few pieces of Copper from a sales presentation I had done for one of my clients. My client wanted to have me chemically patina their roof to a “green/blue color”. I know how hard it is to get a controlled color so in the fall of 2007 I had met with Mike Upwall (The architect), Gary Hill of Midway Construction (the builder) and the home owners to show them how if I used one chemical on six different pieces of copper they would all change to a different color. Two pieces of copper from that presentation where used to create OpsuOne.

After I created OpusOne I realized that I was on to something. I could not come up with a name for it and soon realized that everyone who looked at it saw something different. Many people have commented that looking at my art is like looking at clouds, what you see from one direction is not the same as what you see from another direction and as the light changes that will also change what you see. I wanted the owners of the piece to be free to continue the creative process so I just name them Opus (a work of art, this was a suggestion of Dr Vern Swanson Curator of the SMA) plus the next available number (going up by two since my last name is Duce which sounds like deuce which means two, this started after OpusTwentyTwo and was a suggestion of my adopted son Vassily.)