“My initial encounter with the Arts Center occurred back in September, 1986. Having just been laid off from my job, the following month I stopped into the St. Petersburg Arts Center. I saw an exhibit showcasing the prints by an Arts Center print-making teacher and her students. I was so surprised by what I saw that I immediately signed up to take a class with her, which turned into several classes over the course of a year. “By then I was hooked by my new life as a fine artist. The Arts Center’s annual Festival of the States exhibition in January 1987 was my debut exhibition showing two of my prints from that previous print-making class. “Now 30 years on producing and exhibiting my works, I can whole-heartedly state it was one of the best decisions that I had ever made when I walked through those doors at the St. Petersburg Arts Center on that fateful day back in September of 1986.”