The artist's website states:

"My mother was also an artist, and my upbringing was endowed with full participation in a myriad of cultural experiences in New York City; I grew up in museums, galleries, concerts and dance performances. I graduated from New York City's High School of Music and Art in 1965 and attended Cooper Union School of Art for a year before migrating to California, where I entered an unorthodox apprenticeship in the UC Berkeley ceramics department, then chaired by Peter Voulkos. The community of fabulously talented artists sharing ideas and studio space in Northern California was incredibly rich, and this was the real seedbed of my artistic development."