I made a tin man costume with tin foil and furnace parts because I thought it would help me be more heartless.

After finishing art school I was applying to stores like Home Depot and Walmart. You know, places where you have to take a urine test before you get your minimum wage. Even those places wouldn't hire me. So I was lucky when I got included in a group show at the Richard Heller gallery that kind of started my art career.

I've been very influenced by Inuit art especially some drawings and watercolors I've seen.

I was always doing films, but the ceramics didn't come until later. I did take ceramics in university, which gave me an appetite for the medium, but I couldn't figure out what I wanted to do with it yet.

Winnipeg has the largest collection of Inuit art in the world, I believe. They can be quite simple in a great way and often have sparse backgrounds and isolated characters. They often have a really great look to them.

When I was a school kid I used to read lots of comics. This started me on drawing, I would make my own comics about my teddy bear whose name happened to be Ted.

I actually prefer the silent black and white version of the Wizard Of Oz from the 20's.

I use dull colors in my drawings because I started out using a root beer base because it seemed like an interesting idea and when it turned out that it worked quite well as an ink I started using other colors that would compliment it.

The muted color scheme allows the occasional brighter yellow or red to pop out on the wall in a show, which I like.

I've been very fortunate in my art career. It's something I would never have expected.

I make art primarily for myself and to show my friends so I guess it's important to make art that they can connect to.

I like all kinds of music but some of my all time favorites are P.I.L., Yoko Ono, T-Rex, and Anton Karas.

Yoko Ono is someone who's music I've discovered more recently. The current cd rereleases of her albums all had bonus tracks recorded just with a tape recorder and I'm really into these at the moment because they have a great intimate feel.

I'm not a trained dancer in the slightest.

My favorite artists from comics were early ones like Jack Kirby or Steve Ditko who had a real heavy ink style. Captain America, co created by Jack Kirby, was a favorite of mine and I sometimes use an altered version of his costume on some of my characters.