Everything I've ever done came together when I wrote my first book: The Power of the Bull: Inside the Head of Wayne Porter. I'm a writer, a photographer and an artist so it makes sense that I would write a book a photo-filled book about a sculptor.
Most of my journalism career was on-air in television news, but I've also done radio news and began my news career as a writer-editor on the national desk of an international news wire service. So I'm kind of a hybrid author: a mix of print and broadcast news who knows how to artfully blend words and images. "The Power of the Bull" contains more than 40 photographs.
What also qualifies me to write a book about Porter Sculpture Park is not just because I know something about art because I'm an artist, but because I also know Wayne Porter. That means I wrote the book with inside insight. We grew up in the same small community so I've known him since I was four or five-years-old when his mother was my baby-sitter: two little kids playing in his backyard oblivious to how our lives would diverge and then re-converge in this book.
After I moved away from South Dakota to do big city news, my parents kept me posted about what Wayne was creating at his father's blacksmith shop back home. They and my brother always took me to see Wayne's work when I came home for visits.
When I returned to South Dakota for several years to help my elderly parents, I took a fresh look at Wayne's work and decided it was time to share his art and his life through my words and photography.
So, yes, everything I've done prepared me for who I am now and what I do now: seeing life though a different lens with much more life experience and the fresh perspective that growth brings.
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