I'm a Baltimore native, raised on the water, the son of a creative, visionary father and a 'there's no project I can't tackle' mother. They encouraged my own potential creativity, letting me experiment with construction, space and organization from an early age. While still in college at The Maryland Institute College of Art, I met my first partner, Leslie Bates, who had just left Skidmore, Owings and Merrill in Chicago, to head Interiors at RTKL Baltimore. His Modernist influence balanced my continuing study abroad, through Syracuse University in Florence Italy: the pre-architecture curriculum there sharpened my understanding of various forms of Classicism, and Italian Vernacular architecture. I graduated with a Bachelor's Degree in Interior Design, in 1989. From 1989 until 2001, I worked as a staff designer, then as Associate, at Dvorine Associates in Baltimore. Arleen Dvorine's vision: rich, 'complete', luxurious design, with an emphasis on custom work, has had a major influence on my understanding of color and scale harmony, and on exacting standards of detailing in general. This relationship happily continues: I am now an independent consultant to her firm.