In 1974 I participated in a workshop on shamanism with Joan Halifax in Chicago.

This was to ultimately change the course of my life.

After quitting my job in advertising I moved into a storefront in Rogers Park and began carving wood and hanging out at the Field Museum where I was able to get close to the work of the Northwest Coast Indian carvers.

My ideal was to have my art function in a similar manner as the Tlingit’s, i.e., as a service to the community.

At the time Joan lived in southern California and I decided to make a proposal to her and the Ojai Foundation Community where she lived which was founded as an educational institute specializing in ancient wisdom traditions emphasizing  ecology and stewardship of the planet. This foundation would include the visions of poets and scientists.

For this particular carving I asked community members   to join me in a collective dream which would determine what the subject of the carving could be. As it turned out my dream involved coyotes which were abundant in the Ojai mountains. I had spent a summer at the foundation and had the good fortune of having lunch with the scientist John Lilly, who was doing important work with interspecies communication with dolphins. Everything came together for me in the carving of a coyote leaping through a stone wall and transforming into a dolphin.

Transformation was an encompassing theme at Ojai, So I decided to combine the coyote and dolphin into one being uniting the opposites of water and earth.