From when Doug was about three years old, his favorite toy was modeling clay. He sold his first sculpture, a life-sized ceramic bust, at the age of sixteen. Among Doug’s ancestors (going back to the early 1800s), there were iron fabricators, a cinematographer, and oil painters. Doug was an artist and a scientist from the beginning. During his early years, he was building and flying balsa wood airplanes, and was totally fascinated with everything in Science. In high school, Doug began to use his free time on drawing and sculpture. Later, during his career in Geology, he was constantly working on a sculpture or painting project. After moving to New Mexico in 1985, Doug retired from Geology and made the transition to full-time sculptor.
Doug’s sculptures communicate themes and concepts that emanate from the synergy of artistic and scientific creativity. Through artistic operations of abstraction and transformation, he crafts Space Age materials into objects that speak to us about the existence of spiritual realms. Doug conjures metaphors of high ideals and spiritual journeys.
One of Doug’s favorite Space Age materials is “diffraction grating film”. It is a hologram of a rainbow, imprinted on Mylar film, and backed with vapor-deposited aluminum. When stretched and adhered to surfaces, the film acts like an iridescent mirror, reflecting images of intense color. The viewer’s motion in front of Doug’s mirrors activates a phenomenal shift in prismatic color by varying the angle from which the work is viewed. Choreographed by the moving body, unexpected dynamic allegiances emerge from the interaction between the color-shifting mirror and the constructed field. According to Doug, this phenomenon of spectral transformation suggests an opening to a spiritual world or a crossover to a parallel universe. Doug enjoys working with aircraft aluminum and unusual alloys. When sculpting with Space Age tools and materials, he feels that he is somehow closer to the mysteries of the Universe, and a very large scale of events.