CURRENT MISSION

To engineer situations of wonder. Possibly using puppets.

ABOUT ME

I am a songwriting musician (accordion, etc.) and a puppeteer living in the Bay Area, CA. I perform in a band called Corpus Callosum when in California. I spent a few years in Chicago, working on an MFA and apprenticing to an incredible "Chamber Puppet Theater" called Blair Thomas & Co.

PHILOSOPHY

If all I accomplish in this life is to inspire other people into creative acts, I'd consider it a victory.

Pourquoi je suis sur Couchsurfing

HOW I PARTICIPATE IN COUCHSURFING

In 2009 I went out on my first national solo tour with accordion and puppets, and couldn't believe how many wonderful people I met while couchsurfing for those 3 months.

I have since settled down in San Francisco in a warehouse with the rest of the members of the band. We organize miniature acoustic music shows here with the intention of bringing people together over artwork, as well as curate an evening of performance art & music in San Jose.

COUCHSURFING EXPERIENCE

I have couchsurfed solo at about a dozen places over the last few years around the US. I also tour every year with my band, Corpus Callosum, and have slept in such wonderful places as a geodesic dome in Seattle, WA and a tree house in Cottage Grove, OR. We love to host traveling musicians, especially if they are up for giving an acoustic performance in the living room while they're here.

Centres d'intérêt

puppetry, painting, psychogeography, street games, parkour, teaching, animation, film, photography, field recordings, tai chi, wonderment and the experience of the uncanny

• arts
• theater
• performing arts
• photography
• technology
• traveling
• painting
• drawing
• music
• animation
• engineering

Morceaux de musique, films et livres

Strangely, I hardly read books anymore, but I love to hear stories.

As for music, while I write mostly quirky folk songs on accordion, I am an appreciator of a wide range of underground music: rock & roll, world music, american roots musics, 20th-century classical, japanese rock & roll, garage punk. These days, my favorites are the Yeah Yeah Yeah's (NYC), Orchestra Baobab (Senegal) and Stereopony (Japan).

Une aventure extraordinaire que j'ai vécue

I organize $0 budget street games in an effort to teach urban psychogeography, empowerment and wonderment.

The most amazing artistic project I have yet visited is a storefront in Culver City, CA, called the Museum of Jurassic Technology.

Enseignez, apprenez, partagez

I try to teach everything I know, from puppetry to psychogeography. Professionally, from 2005-2006 I was adjunct faculty at Ex'pression College for Digital Arts, teaching classical drawing and painting techniques to animation majors.