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I have many memories that go back to before I was five years old, some as early as two, when my family lived in one of the older working class neighborhoods on the southwest side of Chicago. When I was about four, I remember discovering a box of colorful 1-inch tiles that had been forgotten under a wooden walkway in a neighbor's overgrown yard and feeling very fascinated with them. Although I reluctantly left them there because I knew that I would be in trouble if I took them home, for some reason I never forgot them and the grid and potential of those tiles has always been with me and has been a constant in my art work. Perhaps they already existed in my psyche and I only became aware after I saw them or perhaps some window was open in me and they just imprinted. Whatever the reason, the concept of a modular grid with movable tiles is very inherent and fundamental for me and I can trace it back to this one memory. The grid motif is a strong factor in how I like to arrange space and maybe even the entire world, as I perceive it. I feel that things are discrete and have boundaries, but belong to a larger community of similar entities that can be arranged in various ways. The square of the grid may also reflect natural crystalline structure, with that of the mineral pyrite being the best example.

During the same period that I discovered the tiles, I also remember seeing a mound in a vacant lot (called a prairie) around the corner of the block where we lived and imagining that a giant was buried there. I was just very curious about what was under the ground and developed the habit of glancing down when I walked, looking for clues. The first time I learned that something interesting could be present under the ground was when my mother took me to the Field Natural History Museum and I saw the Tyrannosaurus Rex in the great hall. Soon afterwards, I found a partially buried bone in our backyard and imagined that it was part of a dinosaur that was lying there just under the surface neatly confined to the area bound by our fence. I didn't really believe my mother when she told me that the bone had been buried by our dog and that there was no dinosaur.

As I grew, my fascination with things under the ground expanded from buried dinosaurs and mythical giants to rocks, minerals and human artifacts. When I was 11, I found a book at the local library about Schliemann and his discoveries at ancient Troy and declared that I wanted to become an archaeologist when I grew up. As it turned out, after graduating high school, I followed a somewhat convoluted path to Colorado where I became a geologist. Although I was somewhat interested in the practical side of geology and its applications, what really interested me most were two things: the beauty and the nature of inorganic matter, especially crystalline forms and the morphing of organic remains into fossils, and stratigraphy, layers of rocks providing a detailed, albeit incomplete, record of earth's history. It was exciting to break away a piece of layered rock with my hammer to reveal a flat surface with fossils or woody chips laid down an unimaginably long time ago. I felt privileged to be the first human to see that particular tiny glimpse of a mysterious ancient world. Maybe it's just a small thing, but in my mind, it's precious and beautiful. Following is a poem, written several years ago at Colorado National Monument, reflecting some of these feelings along with their spiritual implications:

Monuments

Eolian sands, how can I know your ancient winds
That arranged each grain, now frozen in place?
Your dunes buries alive and so lithified
Into canyon walls that bear your trace.

Vast monuments you are but for whom do you stand?
Continuing sculpture in this remote arid land
Glowing warm red in the golden dusk light
Strong silhouettes on a moonlit night

Your bedded layers like pages in a book
Crumbling, laying open, inviting me to look
Far down the corridor of time and to see
When earth was not home to creatures like me.

True monuments you are, but for whom do you stand?
For the dinosaurs that lie in the nearby sand?
They lie were they fell on an ancient shore
In a vanished world, extinct forevermore.

What can I hope to find in this place?
Some truth, some answer or an abyss?
Questions like these your presence demands.
Great monuments you are, but for whom do you stand?

Beyond geology, this magical nature of excavation and discovery extended to human artifacts.

Journeys of a Cultural Refugee

Polish-American Childhood in Chicago

I grew up on the southwest side of Chicago in a Polish-American neighborhood. Our small brick houses were boxed in between a large factory complex, a warehouse district, and railway tracks. There were four Catholic churches, seven bakeries, four funeral homes, and a tavern on every other corner. The majority of the people in the neighborhood were of Slavic descent, primarily Polish. My father's parents had emigrated from Poland. My mother, born in another south side neighborhood, was of Slovak heritage. When I was a child, I rarely met an older person of my grandparent's generation, who didn't speak with an Eastern European accent.

Sundays are what I remember the most clearly about my childhood, because they were so consistent. In the morning we went to mass, and then to the bakery. Afterwards, my father went to the cemetery to visit the graves of his mother and his brother, who died when he was ten and my father was eight. I often went along and especially liked to visit the "baby graves." This was an unkempt part of the cemetery where the forgotten graves of children, who died in the disease epidemics of the '20's and '30's, were buried. Two of my grandmother's babies were buried there. During these excursions, we listened to the Polish station on the car radio, while my father told me stories about the hardships that he and his family had endured during the Depression.

On Sundays, everyone dressed up. My father, who normally wore plain, dark-colored work clothes, wore a white shirt and tie. We typically ate a large mid-day meal, and then my three younger brothers and I piled into the car for the weekly visit to my Slovak grandparent's house. The outside of their house had a well-tended garden, with flowers, vegetables, and a raspberry bush. Inside, I remember the sweet smell of my grandfather's pipe, shiny dark wood covered with doilies, warm sunlight streaming through lace curtains, steaming pots of vegetables on the stove, and stout ladies in floral dresses speaking Slovak.

While my family was warm and loving, I was confused by my environment as a child. I never saw people like us on television, in movies, or in books, so I didn't understand how we fit into the greater scheme of things. My parents always emphasized the importance of understanding and taking pride in our Polish and Slovak ancestry, but it was hard for me to see the relevance. It seemed to me that our ethnic identity was focussed around the Catholic Church, which even as a child, I perceived to be a mixed bag. As a teenager, I was perplexed by the church's attitude toward women and sexuality, so when I was sixteen, I announced that I was no longer a Catholic. Although, it took me two years to completely stop going to church.

My parents often talked about travel as something wonderful to dream about and to aspire to. They had both traveled when they were younger. My mother had taken a few trips within the U.S. My father, who had been in the U.S. Army during World War II, had traveled in both the U.S. and Europe. Traveling ended for them when they had children, and could no longer afford it. Because we never traveled anywhere when I was a child, my experience of the world was limited to the Chicago area, and a few day trips to places like Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. We often went to the forest preserves that dot the outskirts of Chicago for walks and to fish in the small lakes. Sometimes I managed, in my imagination and by virtue of my limited experience, to turn these excursions into real wilderness adventures.

Every summer my mother took us on long, sweltering bus rides to visit the great cultural attractions of Chicago; the museums, the aquarium, and the zoos, which opened up a whole new world to me. This began a life-long love affair with museums. My first electrifying museum-induced experience was when I was four, and I saw the Tyrannosaurus Rex skeleton in the vast central hall of the Natural History museum. Afterwards, I dug for and found bones in our backyard and imagined that a dinosaur was buried beneath our lawn. When my mother told me that the bones I found belonged to our dog, I humored her by pretending that I believed her.

I was fascinated and sometimes a little frightened by the complex cultural soup of Chicago, which contained every type of curiosity. CTA bus rides were often the equivalent of a multi-lingual circus. Some of my personal favorites were 1) an elderly Caucasian man whose saggy arms were covered with vulgar tattoos of naked women, 2) a Greek woman who proudly displayed a dark hairy patch between her breasts by wearing low-cut dresses, and 3) a Black man who always wore a huge black and silver sombrero. While these images may seem benign now, when I was young they had a mythological impact on my imagination.

When I was eighteen, in spite of its advantages, Chicago seemed limited, vaguely disappointing, and somehow fake. While there was a lot of culture, it felt like a mish-mash with no integrity, just watered-down remnants of something real that exists or existed long ago and/or far away. Certainly, from a nature perspective Chicago is rather boring, if you're not utterly fascinated by grasshoppers and squirrels. There are almost no public lands in the area, and you can drive hundreds of miles and still find yourself crammed into a campground with other people from Chicago.

Gaining Perspective through Travel

Because I was generally dissatisfied with my environment, I felt that gaining some perspective through travel could help. At nineteen it was time for me to "see the world." In retrospect, I was seeking three things, 1) a context for the cultural diversity that I was so familiar with, 2) a sense of historical precedence, and 3) an experience of nature. I wanted to connect to something that felt ancient and enduring. The burning question that I needed to answer was "Is the whole world like Chicago or is it "more real," i.e. are there mountains, oceans, castles, ancient monuments, wild animals, etc?" While I obviously wasn't able to address all aspects of my question with my first trip, it was a great start in that it was anything but disappointing. It exceeded my expectations in every way, as have most of my subsequent travels.

My first trip was to Paris and London in April of 1970. Ever since, I have thought of Europe as a bottomless jewel box, full of interesting, beautiful treasures, all in close proximity to one another. I think that I chose Paris because I thought of it as the cultural capital of the world. I was being pragmatic. If Paris turned out to be disappointing, what interest would other places hold for me? Another reason for choosing Paris was that I was very familiar with the wonderful collection of French Impressionists at the Art Institute of Chicago. I often went there during my high school years. I remember standing in the great hallway and thinking how happy and peaceful I felt in that environment. This was at a time in my life that was wrought with a myriad of teenage anxieties and depressions. For me, the Art Institute was a sacred temple that provided a glimpse through an ethereal door, which lead to the most wonderful place. The only problem was I couldn't see how to get through that door.

Subsequently, I spent considerable time in England and Ireland, which provided both cultural and nature experiences. In my early education, there was such an emphasis on Britain that I felt that I could adopt some of their cultural heritage as my own. Certainly I knew much more about England than either Poland or Slovakia. All I knew about the countries of my ancestors were that they were behind the Iron Curtain and that they were poor. My time in England provided me with an experience of many of the things that I had been seeking. The rich and varied history is evinced by ancient artifacts and structures throughout the country, which are lovingly maintained. I was thrilled by my visits to prehistoric Stonehenge, Roman ruins, Gothic cathedrals, and medieval castles.

Traveling had definitely been a start to opening that ethereal door that I originally spied at the Art Institute of Chicago a few years before. However, shortly after moving to Denver, I decided to put aside such mystical pursuits, go to college, and get serious about my life. I told myself that this "putting aside" would only be temporary, and that I would get back to "it" after graduation. Once I was in a professional job, I would be better equipped financially to pursue whatever "it" was. Putting my childhood interest in rocks and dinosaur bones to good use, I studied geological engineering.

Cultural Crisis in Denver

After graduating, I worked for ten years in the oil industry. I was surprised and disappointed to find that most of my fellow professionals had no interest in art and other cultural pursuits, outside of ones that are mundane and mainstream American. About halfway into my petroleum career something broke in my life. Everything felt wrong and nothing associated with my career was what I thought it would be. I felt isolated and unhappy.

Then one day, while I was sitting in traffic I thought, "I hate this ugly made-for-cars environment. Even though I live in it everyday it never stops feeling foreign to me. While, on the other hand, the art of ancient Egypt (for example), which has no apparent relevance to my daily life makes me feel at home. How can this be? How can I be alienated from my own world, and at home with something so distant in time and space?" It occurred to me that this paradox was somehow related to the ethereal door. Then, as I realized that over the years I hadn't made much progress at resolving that issue, I felt lost and frustrated. However, I did spy one possible clue or guide. It was a thin thread that I held, which represented my attraction to art. Before the traffic light changed, I resolved to follow that thread wherever it might lead.

I began my journey by studying books on primitive art, which lead me to books on comparative mythology. I began to understand that my strong connection to art was no fluke, but an "a priori" recognition of archetypal imagery. These images make me feel at home, because in effect they are home, I was born with them. As part of my search, I also decided to explore my own artistic abilities. In the following years, I sporadically made art both to hone my skills, and to explore inner themes.

Connecting with the Culture of my Ancestors

My readings on comparative mythology eventually lead me to books on goddess mythology and related archaeology. A very ancient goddess figure was found near a small town in Moravia called Dolni Vestonice, which is within 150 kilometers of where my Slovak grandmother was born. I started thinking about my ancestors, and so decided to visit my ancestral homeland in Central Europe. On my first trip, I went to Vienna, Prague and Krakow, and the next year I traveled to Budapest and a variety of sites in Slovakia. Both trips were full of small, but very meaningful pilgrimages. One of these was to the archeological site at Dolni Vestonice, and to the museum in Brno, which houses the ancient goddess figure, mentioned above. Another was to the town where my grandmother was born, and which she left in 1918, never to return. In general, I found myself to be deeply moved by many of the things that I saw on these trips, and much of my reaction surprised me. For example, I had never been much interested in folk arts in the past, but my visit to the ethnographic museum at Martin, in Slovakia, changed that.

During the interim between the two trips, I began to study the Slovak language with a small group in Denver. In Slovakia, people often asked me why I would want to study Slovak. My answer was always the same "Lebo potrebuem pamatas sa moju rodinu" ("Because I need to remember my family").

I came home from Slovakia feeling so culturally connected and nurtured, that I thought I would burst, and in a way I did. About a week after I was back, I did a portrait of a peasant Slovak woman in pastel, using a printed background and frame of a folk motif from a house in the village of Cicmany. It was a rough proto-type but when it was complete I knew that I had finally arrived somewhere. The ethereal door that I had only glimpsed through in the past had finally started to open.

Over the next few years, I completed several art pieces, including portraits of my Slovak grandmother and my Polish grandmother. Most of the other pieces are related to goddess mythology and themes of birth, death, and regeneration. For me, art is a process by which I connect with, and honor, the forces of life, the earth, and the ancestors.

Connecting with World Cultures

A wonderful by-product of all this study and travel was a newly found understanding of and respect for worldwide mythologies and paganism. It opened up an appreciation for other cultural traditions that I never dreamed possible. For example, I found some aspects of East Indian and African culture to be as nurturing to me as my own Slavic culture. It also enhanced my understanding of European Christianity, which has retained many clearly recognizable pagan elements throughout the centuries.

The thin thread of art, that I began to follow many years ago, turned into a rich tapestry. The ethereal door opened, and to my surprise, it led me to the long-lost archetype of the goddess, a beautiful metaphor for all that is sacred and mysterious. Art took me full circle, back to my own ethnic culture, and to a deep appreciation of the traditions of others. My childhood desire to feel connected to something ancient and enduring became a reality.