After ten years of working at UCSC, I decided not to deal with the bureaucracy any more. I opened up Art School Santa Cruz on Portrero. I went non-profit. I had 12 artists teaching a number of who are now teaching at Universities. I had 120 students—adults and kids in all kinds of classes.

In 1989, the Loma Prieta earthquake hit and all of our funding sources went down the drain. In the meantime, I was teaching stone carving at Art School Santa Cruz and my friend Norm, who owned the cannery, said there was a big barn that was empty. The roof leaked, but at 6000 square feet this was a great building.

They gave me a deal on turning this into a studio. I started going to Italy and bringing back 30 tons of marble at a time. We had containers of stone. I had students up the Yazoo who wanted to learn how to carve stone. It was a neat situation.