Stories.

A friend called. Jeff went to see if he could save anything. He was told to stay away — bed bugs. So he stood on the sidewalk and watched.

"Saw it out front waiting for the garbage men to take them all away."

"From around six feet away on the sidewalk."

An estimated five hundred to one thousand works. No inventory. Most had never been photographed. Some of what he considered his best work.

"I made some great large pieces and I thought they were really good."

"Only in one picture."

Some of the lost works survive in exactly one photograph — taken incidentally, where the work appears in the background of something else. You can see it was there. You cannot see it clearly. That is all that's left.

"Sad. Enough."

The archive you are looking at now exists because of what happened on that sidewalk. The 1,084 works here are what the water didn't reach.

There is a sculpture somewhere in the world that Jeff made at art school in the late 1970s.

Prism paper applied to sections of iron gridwork found in a junkyard. Something torn from a magazine incorporated into the surface. Approximately 38 inches wide, 24 inches tall, 3 or 4 inches deep. It hung on a wall.

He showed it at a student show. Someone bought it.

Jeff does not know who. He does not know where the piece is now. No photograph exists.

That person has lived with that piece for nearly fifty years. They may not know who made it. They may have kept it or discarded it. There is no way to know.

This work is not in the archive. It was the first documented sale — and it left before there was a record to leave behind.

When the kids were heading toward college, Jeff thought maybe making things could be a way to earn some extra money. He was still working as a designer. There was a little more time.

"Ha Ha Ha — 30 odd years ago and still making artwork."

That's roughly how that went. Not a career in art. Not an income. Just still making things, thirty years after the plan was to become a fine artist.

The making had become identity by then. The found objects weren't a workaround anymore — they were the method.

"Became a way of my life making art / never had money / jealous of all the other artist that did."

The jealousy was specifically about materials, not recognition or status. Other artists had studios and budgets. He had what was around.

Over the course of decades of research — not a single moment, but a slow accumulation — Jeff came to understand that Robert Rauschenberg had already explored much of the territory he had been working in. Combines built from anything. Found material as valid as paint. The permission to use discarded things.

When asked what he had wanted from his work at CIA: "Wanted to be a fine artist."

When asked what he discovered about Rauschenberg's work over the years: "Nothing ground breaking" — meaning his own work. He realized it wasn't breaking new ground. Someone had already been there.

When asked what he did: "Kept going."

Why he kept going after this realization — with the art world not paying attention, with the territory already mapped — is the most important unanswered question in this archive.

Q: Why? If you knew it wasn't groundbreaking, if the art world wasn't paying attention —
A: [ended session]

Art supplies were always too expensive.

"Art supplies were always too expensive."

So the work was built from what was available. CDs. Computer floppies. Keyboards. Prism paper from school. Things from the dollar store. Tape.

"Something that still had a life left in it."

This wasn't a conceptual position at first — it was financial reality. Over time, it became identity. Discarded objects becoming something else was not just necessity. It was how Jeff understood what making things meant.

If money were no object, he would work like Anselm Kiefer — large studio, monumental scale, extraordinary materials.

"Where did he get the money?"

The found objects were real. They were also constraint. The vision always operated at a different scale than the materials allowed. art1056 — a sculpture made from old light bulbs, tubes, and wires — is in the archive and is representative of what the found-object method produced. View art1056 →

For approximately four years, Jeff has been incorporating his grandchildren's drawings into his work.

"Whatever they want to make, and whatever I want to do with it."

The boundary between what the grandchildren contribute and what Jeff contributes has become unclear.

"Getting hard to tell where they end and I begin."

"I think that's right."

This is the only part of the archive that faces forward — still happening, involving living people other than Jeff, with no clear endpoint. In fifty years, the most likely reason someone opens this archive is to recognize hands they know. See the collaborative works →

Jeff built the archive alone.

"Took a fucking long time. Moments of doubt in the middle."

The archive now contains 1,084 works. It covers 1974 to the present. Every work has been cataloged, photographed, and given a static page.

He built it for his daughters' families and their future generations — as a practical reference for the physical works they will inherit, and as proof that the lost work existed.

Some of the best pieces exist now in a single photograph. The archive is not a complete record. It is what survived.

When asked what artist he would work like if money were no object, Jeff named Anselm Kiefer — large studio, monumental scale, extraordinary works. When asked what draws him to Kiefer's work:

"Everything."

Scale, materials, subject matter, the whole thing.

"Where did he get the money?"

The found objects were real. They were also constraint. The vision that ran for fifty years may have always operated at a different scale than the materials allowed. What Jeff made was not necessarily what Jeff imagined making. That gap is part of the record.

"That they would be very impressed if they had the chance to see all the works in one space."

Not about meaning. Not about legacy. The physical experience of scale — all 1,084 works together, in one room. That is what he wants them to know.