Diversity Statement

I am a work in progress, formed of a middle-class 1980’s upbringing in the northwest suburbs of Houston, Texas. Our neighborhood was an economic monoculture, but at the same time, it was a place of great cultural diversity. I grew up in the middle of that American melting pot, playing a lot of Dungeons & Dragons with the nerdiest possible cross-section of the neighborhood.

I was lucky to have parents who recognized in me an early aptitude for the visual arts, and they encouraged me to apply to Houston’s High School for the Performing and Visual Arts. The first among many similar schools throughout the South in the 1970s, HSPVA was founded as an antidote to Houston’s historically segregated public school system and operated as a magnet for culturally diverse students from across the city who shared a common passion for creative expression. I flourished in this environment.

I flourished in many different ways. I benefited from advanced instruction in my art major, but I found a more profound benefit from working side-by-side with unique voices from every corner of the city. My (new) friends came from _everywhere_- political refugees, people of color, people with money, people without, people from huge families, and those who lived alone. Gay people, bi people, trans people. I embedded with Houston’s Latino arts community at the “East End Show” and celebrated Juneteenth every year with friends who played in the jazz band. I learned about ‘high’ art at the Menil Museum and ‘low’ art at the Commerce Street Warehouse. I reveled in the color blindness of the punk scene. I thrived, surrounded by a rainbow of unique people who cared enough about me to help me grow.

I learned to respect both the work that people did and the manner in which they did it. The diversity of our community was a source of ‘voice,’ but it was ultimately the work that made a difference. Cultural diversity was a thing to be celebrated because it led to unique expression, a different perspective, and an alternate reality that expanded the world over and over again. But nobody would ever hear that voice if you didn’t learn how to do the work.

Among my hard-working peers, I learned to respect the chimeras, the hybrids, and the people who lived on intellectual borders. We were each unique products of our upbringing, but beautiful things happened when we collided with one another in an equitable and supportive environment. Our diversity was a force multiplier, not a source of dissonance.

The experience at HSPVA opened doors for my friends and me at art institutes across the country. I chose The Cooper Union in New York City and entered the School of Architecture there in the fall of 1988. I traded the chimerical cultural melange of Houston for something a bit more raw in Manhattan’s Lower East Side, and I opened the next chapter of my cultural development. I learned about the harder edges of racism and cultural elitism. I watched as gentrification wiped across the East Village, pushing the ad-hoc residents of Tompkins Square Park (metaphorically) into the East River. Confronted face-to-face with NYC’s homeless population, I learned quickly to appreciate the related challenges of mental health and substance abuse. I learned that there were ‘ghettos’ everywhere and saw how easy it was for people who lived right next door to one another to reject exchange of any kind with those perceived as ‘different’ from them. Aggressively, at times.

As I had been taught, I brought what I saw into my work. I became fascinated with the process of balkanization that drives people towards an increasingly fine-grained expression of their perceived cultural purity— rather than embracing their differences on an equitable playing field as a source of progressive energy. I puzzled over the animal fears that drove people under stress away from one another rather than bonding them more tightly. I wondered if thorough intentional community planning, you could fix that- and I did my undergrad Thesis on that subject.

Cooper Union under John Hejduk in the ’90s was a special place. It was the closest experience I think I have had to a pure creative meritocracy. I went to school for free, founded on a progressive nineteenth-century ideology that education should be available equally to all without exception. All of my classmates benefitted from that vision, and we knew that our opportunity was exceptional and came with strings attached. We were expected to do great work, and to pay the gift of our education forward when we could.

At Cooper Union, I had my first real teaching experience. Every Saturday for several years, I and several of my classmates taught inner-city high school kids to draw through the Cooper Union Saturday Program. Free of cost, just like the rest of the institution, “SatPro” offered kids without financial means an open door into the international world of architecture and design. I passed the lessons I learned Monday through Friday right back into the next generation of students on the following Saturday. I’m proud that several of my students applied and were themselves accepted into Cooper Union. I was learning how to pay it forward.

I left Cooper Union to begin a professional career after finishing my degree. Through a range of opportunities and experiences, I am now thirty-some-odd years into a diverse ‘meta-design’ practice that has taken me in many unexpected directions. I now have less of that career ahead of me than I have behind, and I’m growing more and more reflective about what it has meant to me. However, my core values, my baseline affinity for strong ideas born in diversity, remains unchanged, and I believe it has served me well. I like opportunities that keep me on my toes and that challenge the things I think I know. Especially about people. Deep, mysterious, complex, wonderful people. Wherever they come from and wherever they go, I love the things they do and why they do them.

Unquestionably, collective progress on the diversity, equity, and inclusion challenges faced by the major institutions of our time begins with a conscious effort from each of us as individuals. I am committed to a lifelong journey of discovery, and I still have many miles to go. I will always value the people I meet along the way and the lessons they are willing to teach me.