Art, art and art... I'm excited about all types of art, from classical to contemporary. Music... all types, but I lean towards alternative and creative styles and musicians. My wife and our dog Renfield! Animals in general and dogs specifically... Travel, I love to travel, but we've not been able to do as much as we'd like to lately. Going to hockey games-go Predators! The Tennessee Titans, building and painting Garage Kits- used to be a hobby, now it's a business (be careful what you wish for!) Weird stuff, a fascination with the history of Jack the Ripper, absinthe, horror films, meeting interesting people...
I'd like to meet:
Creative types! Through my work I’ve been very fortunate to have met so many interesting and creative people, but I always look forward to meeting more! Artists, writers, filmmakers, and musicians inspire me, so I look forward to hopefully meeting more throughout the years.
Music:
WOW, do I love music! My tastes vary widely, from classic rock to gothic and dark wave to classical composers and opera. I listen to alternative and punk rock, industrial, a little bit of everything! I mainly gravitate towards the more creative musicians, ones who are trailblazers, and originators. My all-time favorite musician is David Bowie. My very close second favorite would be The Beatles- Revolver is a masterpiece.
My other top favorites would be ever creative and innovative Roxy Music and Siouxsie and the Banshees. Some of my other all-time favs are Iggy Pop, 1960's originals like The Stones, The Doors, The Kinks, Jimi Hendrix, The Zombies, The Velvet Underground, and ‘60’s soul music generally. Other Musical leaders such as Lou Reed, John Cale, Brian Eno, Kraftwerk, Bauhaus, Bob Marley, The Clash, Joy Division, Ohgr and Skinny Puppy, Kate Bush-(my all-time favorite female vocalist- you gotta own The Dreaming and Hounds of Love), The Sex Pistols and Public Image Ltd., The Ramones, Tom Waits, King Crimson, Patti Smith, Public Enemy, Parliament Funkadelic, Curtis Mayfield, Al Green, The Gap Band, I could go on and on!
Alternative and Dark Wave innovators such as The Cocteau Twins, Dead Can Dance, This Ascension and Autumn’s Gray Solace- (two of the best dark wave female vocalists, brilliant, beautiful music); Faith and the Muse, Lycia- “Ionia†is one of the bleakest and most fascinating albums you’ll ever hear, Mephisto Walz, The Shroud, Fields of the Nephilim, Clan of Xymox, and way too many more to mention.
Other musicians I love include (in no particular order) Puccini, Wagner, Philip Glass, Beethoven, Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, Nina Simone, David Sylvian, Deftones, Gary Numan, The Cult, Interpol, The Editors, Kashmir, Jane’s Addiction, Japan, Marilyn Manson, Danzig, Peter Gabriel, Radiohead, Rob Zombie, Ryuichi Sakamoto, The Stranglers, Smashing Pumpkins, and many more...
Movies:
As an artist, I’m drawn to filmmakers that work with a strong visual style such as Stanley Kubrick, Werner Herzog, Jean Cocteau, Carl Theodor Dreyer, Ingmar Bergman, Francis Ford Coppola, Tim Burton, Frank Darabont, Fritz Lang, F.W. Murnau, The Brothers Quay, Jan Svankmajer, Kurosawa, and many others. Not trying to sound pretentious, but those are the types of filmmakers who interest and influence me... but that’s not to say that I don’t love and enjoy all types of films, I mean, I do have Harold and Kumar go to White Castle on DVD!
Some of my all-time favorites are:
Coppola’s The Godfather One and Two, and Carl Theodor Dreyer’s Passion of Joan of Arc- just an astounding film! Murnau’s Nosferatu (of course), Jean Cocteau’s Beauty and the Beast, Bergman’s Seventh Seal, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Kurosawa’s Throne of Blood, Herzog’s Aguirre, the Wrath of God, Herzog’s Nosferatu, Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange, 2001 A Space Odyssey, Barry Lyndon, Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Carl Theodor Dreyer’s Ordet-(strangely disturbing), My Favorite Year, Young Frankenstein, Burton’s Sleepy Hollow, Edward Scissorhands, The Shawshank Redemption, and To Kill a Mockingbird. Then of course there’s my love for all of the classic horror films from Universal Studios and Hammer Studios; there’s not much from either Universal of Hammer that I don’t have a soft spot for! Other films I love include The Exorcist, Rosemary’s Baby, John Carpenter’s The Thing, Bladerunner, Planet of the Apes (1968), To Have and To Have Not, Casablanca, Trading Places, A Simple Plan, Oh Brother Where Art Thou, Fargo, The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, wow, too many to mention!
Television:
There’s not a lot of television that interests me anymore, it’s truly a vast wasteland. I do like a few of the classic shows like Leave it to Beaver, The Munsters, The Addams Family, The Andy Griffith Show (the Barney years), and the one and only Dark Shadows! Seems most of my choices come from the 1960s since that was most impressionable- the period I probably watched the most television. As an adult, my all-time favorite show would have to be Upstairs, Downstairs. Brilliant writing and acting, as well as documenting a tremendous amount of history of the era. The only shows I currently watch steadily are Dexter (highly entertaining), 30 Rock (too funny and smart for television), The Amazing Race (because I love to travel, but not like that!) and that’s about it, other than the news or David Letterman.
Books:
I read all of the time, or at least as much as my spare time will allow. Fiction, horror, biographies, books on Jack the Ripper, I love to read! Some of my favorite authors include John Steinbeck, Caleb Carr, Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, Truman Capote, Stephen King, H.P. Lovecraft, and Harper Lee to just name a few.
Heroes:
My wife, my mom and dad, and friends are the most important people to me. My other heroes are also the artists that influence and inspire me like David Bowie for his creativity and risk-taking, painters like John Singer Sargent (amazing portrait painter and technician), Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Edgar Degas for their lasting impressions of the Belle Époque, a period I’d loved to have experienced. The many visual masters of Dadaism and German Expressionism, and contemporary painters Mark Ryden and Todd Schorr, as well as sculptor, alchemist and the all around genius Thomas Kuntz.
