My interest in the blended use of Music, Movement, Art, Photography, Art Direction-Set Design or what today is appropriately called Multi Media began at USC [University of Southern California]
This was a very important period in my development musically and artisically.
I was typical of gifted kids in The Arts…. it began at a very young age. Alas, I was not allowed the indulgence after age 7 because of my parents’ choice to keep me grounded vs in an Arts “ivory tower”.
That was the explanation….. years later…. by my mother as to why she did not take me out of Public School and put me in a School for the Arts when she had been urged to do so by my music education teachers when I was 6 1/2 years old.
With the focus in my early years on the overwhelming civic involvement of my parents in the Civil Rights Movement 1958-1964, my artistic development became a quiet personal journey back seated until the late 1960s-mid 1970s
The idea of blended genres or Multi Media reached a new height for me in 1984 when I met the great innovator, Alvin Nikolais , creator of the landmark 1960s-90s Dance Theater Company, Alvin Nikolais Dance Theater back stage during The 1984 Summer Olympics Arts Festival in Los Angeles.
This was an Olympics Arts Festival like non other, in which I was also a feted Visual Artist participant in LA ’84:The Best of Southern California Art