The Urban Fossil Story

It all began back in 1989, in a gallery down in New York City's SOHO Art District.
I was helping a gallery owner/ friend set up a large sculpture display in the front display window. There was a sill that obstructed viewing the ornate base of the statue and it needed to be propped up. Since no pedestal was large enough to raise the staue, I noticed that they were renovating a building across the street and piled the old bricks by the curbside. I asked if I can borrow some bricks and proceeded to construct the make-shift pedestal for the statue. The two foot tall brick pedestal was finished in a matter of minutes and I went to retrieve the large statue for display. A large tour bus loaded with Japanese tourists disembarked in front of the gallery and filed inside. They proceeded to pickup the bricks and walk towards the register. I said "Hey, please leave those bricks alone, they have plenty of them across the street!" The spokesman for the group explained to me that they wanted to purchase the bricks. Not wanting to pass up a sale the gallery owner obliged. The tourists didn't even blink when he told them they can have them for $10 a brick. I asked the man why he wanted to buy the old bricks? He told me " We wanted to take a piece of New York home with them." I was fascinated by his reply and offered to clean the mortar off the old bricks. I grabbed a hammer and a screwdriver and proceeded to chip away at the dried mortar. With the slip of the hand, I discovered that the bricks were easy to carve. I sculpted the very first brick, a genuine, New York City cockroach! We decided that albeit kinda cute that a cockroach was too icky to sell. We moved on to produce New York City icons such as the Empire State, Chrysler Building as well as other famous and not so famous landmarks and we dubbed them *"Urban Fossils". They soon achieved much acclaim appearing in several magazines and newspapers. Special edition "Urban Fossils" where presented to ators and actresses upon leaving thier theatrical runs on the Broadway Stage so that they too could take a piece of New York so that they too could take a piece of New York home with them. In the late 1990's they were a victim of success and went into retirement. Upon moving to Connecticut, I was inspired by the abundance of picturesque lighthouses and restarted the brickwerks in my basement studio. I can now sculpt just about anything in a brick from people, pets houses cars boats, ships planes and trains...you name it,
I can sculpt it. A recent sale of a high end gallery "Urban Fossil" had led the HGTV program "That's Clever To contact me to appear on their program. The show was filmed on December 16th and will aire sometime in June 2007.