Creig Gillis, Tom Foolery

Getting older doesn't mean a damned rocking chair. I just completed my second RAMROD, Ride Around Mt. Rainier in One Day! Challenging 145+ mile ride with some serious climbs. Note #31 of 850 riders is the order by age, #1 is 79 this year! Here's to riding with a single digit number! Keep on crankin' classmates!

Well, I guess forty five years is not too soon to check in! After CHS I did two years at OSU in liberal arts/elementary ed, then joined the Natl. Guard to beat the draft. After my active duty I returned to OSU, took some art courses, and was advised to go to a larger school, so I transfered up to the U of W. But after two years there the work to support it with Boeing was gone, so I dropped out and went my own way, which I have done ever since. Fall of 1976 I left Seattle, and landed in San Francisco. I stayed there until 1993, by which time I'd made backpack/fishing trips back to Montana, where I'd lived before coming to Corvallis, enough times to decide to bail out of the big city and give rural living a go. I got a small ranch, 226 acres, and designed a solar powered home which takes advantage of the hilltop southern exposure. Once my creation was framed out weather tight I took over and finished it myself.
My artworks began as painting, and then about the time I left for S.F., I began with assemblage. This soon progressed into several formats, including a lit diorama in the dash of a 1965 Rambler I had at the time. Eventually this progressed into the "miniature environments" format, A friend in Hollywood asked me to do a work in a small spotlight, and this started me on a series that lasted nearly twenty five years. Initially these were plays on voyeurism, then satarizations of the contemporary art world. Once back in Montana, they shifted to western art satires. This progressed over into juke box selectors, vending machines, etc. that I'd been collecting over all the years. This became the Vendorama series, currently at the Missoula Art Museum. In the past couple years the work has come full circle to include early assemblage format, and with the times we are in I began to comment in the new series, Dark Horse.
Diet and exercise seem essential to me, so I remain active. I have run all of the years, and recently completed the Bridger Ridge Run a couple summers in a row. The love of road bikes I had as a kid in Corvallis has resumed, kinder to the aging body, and I have been enjoying road events over the past couple summers. I'll be in the RATPOD again this year. One memorable event last summer was the Park2Park, multi day events are great.
So, there you have it, I sit in total peace and quiet, panoramic views of seven mountain ranges, vast open space basically, and I'm focused on highly detailed small works!

Graduating on crutches, what fun! Coming to Corvallis from a small Montana town, Livingston, made the huge student body pretty overwhelming.