Writing for me has become quite natural, even though it began as a side hobby at a time when photography was my main passion. I never wrote professionally until I attended the Convocation at Auschwitz in 1994, 200 Jews, Buddhists and Christians spending a week at the camp giving their energies to the dead., I wrote about it the next morning after I arrived home and had it published in a variety of small local, national and international journals before it was taken up and published by "Yoga Journal" and "Sojourners". Four years later, an article about the Interfaith Pilgrimage of the Middle Passage, a year-long walk retracing the roots of American Slavery, was published as the cover feature in "Hampshire Life" magazine. Since then, I have published a monthly op-ed piece in the Greenfield, MA "Recorder" newspaper. I have also written various pieces and the history of the Renaissance Community commune which is featured on the UMass/Amherst Rare Books Collection site of that name. Currently, I am writing what I call a "reincarnational memoir", centered around a Native American outdoor survival camp I co-directed back in the 1980's. I am an avid reader, historical fiction, like Wouk and Michener, being my main inspirations. I am interested in getting my writing out more and consider this an excellent venue to do so I was born in New York City in 1950 and lived at the Renaissance Community, the largest and most controversial commune in the Northeast from 1970-1988. I am the unofficial historian of the group, the keeper of its photographic archives and one of the principal narrators in "Free Spirits", the Birth, Life and Loss of a New Age Dream", the documentartu film of Renaissance. From 1989-1999, taught 4-6 grades at Bernardston Elementary School while developing a side-career as a photojournalist with various local, national, and international credits. In 1999, I embarked on a career as a landscape painter with group and solo exhibitions in New York City, Boston, Washington D.C. Currently I am a landscape painter represented in two galleries in Taos County, New Mexico where I live and work. I am currently married to Lisa Oxboel, a professional  life coach and have one son, Ariel, and a grandson, Eben.

Award for Excellence by the Publishers of American Education, 1999. "For All the Children Who Were Thrown Away": Educational Leadership Magazine, April 1998. About teaching the Holocaust to elementary-aged schoolchildren.

Teacher Excellence Award, Pioneer Valley Regional School District: 1996-1999

Featured Artist of the Month: Art Divas Gallery, Taos, New Mexico, October 2007.

Opening Exhibition: "Coast to Coast: Into the Wild Blue" Foxhall Gallery, Washington D.C. January 17, 2009.

Best in Show: Taos Fall Arts Festival, 2019

New Mexico Magazine 2024 Artist Calendar