July Artist of the Month

Let's see if you can guess who the Artist-of-the-Month is for July, based on just a few hints. There are 12 artist members so you only get 11 guesses.

This shy fellow's personality began showing up early, and he was reprimanded in kindergarten for mooning his friends on the playground. While in high school he wore a cheerleader outfit in a skit before the entire student body, but he refused to wear blue jeans until after graduation because jeans were just too popular (he always aligns himself with the underdogs). He's got college credit in sailing and bowling, and he once refused to take a mid-term exam as a protest to get a biology professor to teach less rote memorization and more hands-on. It worked, the teacher later thanked him, and he was chosen as "Student of the Year" by the college president.

 

Think you know him?

He has been arrested once, for spearfishing without a license, getting hauled into the judge's chambers at midnight where he pled ignorance (the truth). He escaped with only a small fine due to a lack of fishy evidence. He hit the bull's eye on his first parachute jump, but landed further and further away on each successive jump, soon quitting when it got to be too far to walk back to the airport. This mysterious fellow checked off one of his many bucket list items early on when he flew his hang glider in a thermal above two Turkey Vultures. Camera in hand, he has swum with dolphins and sharks but is still waiting and hoping to meet a cooperative humpback whale.

Any ideas?

He is the only red-headed photographer who has held in his hands a California Condor, Common Loon and Harlequin Duck. At least, the only one he knows of. As a newspaper photographer he has experienced an adult panther leaping into his arms, been chased by a hammer-wielding train worker who apparently didn't want his picture taken, and he has chased after a number of hurricanes and tornadoes. He's photographed governors and presidents, NFL and college football games, beauty queens and the homeless. He once got food poisoning from pork chops served to the press during a Gator Bowl game between Florida and Iowa. He also managed to upset a number of newspaper readers who cancelled their subscriptions after he ran a photo essay on male strippers in the Sunday edition - in the heart of Florida's bible belt.

Give up yet?

This quiet fellow has given presentations on photography and biology to high school and college classes, bird biology lessons to a "superfluity of nuns," and a dazzling Harlequin Duck program to most every Audubon group in western Montana. His work has been published in magazines like American Photographer, American Biology Teacher and National Wildlife but, sadly, he has never seen his face on the cover of the Rolling Stone. He is still waiting to buy five copies for his mother.

If you think you know who the strange boring July Artist-of-the-Month is, then write his name on the back of a $20 bill and deliver it to the Paint Metal & Mud gallery, care of John Ashley. And if you make it to the gallery on Friday July 5th, during the artist's reception from 5-8pm, you can watch this person disappoint literally hundreds of kind people when he picks one winner for his name-the-photograph contest, at 7pm (information in previous post, below).