Dan Page grew up in a village of 300 people in the interior of Maine.  He concentrated most of his personal resources surviving his childhood which he describes as "Hell for the first 10 years".  Educated in a one room schoolhouse which he loved, his home had no running water, central heat, nor bathrooms until he was a teenager.  Dan wanted to express his creative urges early on but was too scared to try because he was afraid of the criticism. "It was better not to do anything. If you were artistic, you were like my mother's brother who was a homosexual, God forbid."  He locked up his artistic impulses and put them away for a long time.  He listened to the music of Muddy Waters, Howling Wolfe, and Leadbelly on his small radio which caught a Blues station out of Buffalo, New York.

        Dan's environment was very provincial and isolated.  He he joined the Army not knowing about the Vietnam War nor the political upheaval and the civil protests that were taking place.  He says he did a lot of drinking and wasted a lot of time.  "When it came close to getting out (I) realized I had no money so I went to Viet Nam to get paid more."  In his first month there he was caught in an early morning rocket attack.  In shock, he tried to save the life of a man who was decapitated. "Got covered with another man's blood and brains. Didn't like that. Haven't really been the same since. But, that is alright. I take my pills, shoot my targets, and keep to myself as much as I can."

        In the early 1980's working in apartment maintenance it occurred to Dan while he wallpapered that it might be fun to try paper mache.  And when he soldered copper pipes he thought he could make something interesting. But he didn't. Fast forward another several years.  Dan was house painting and made a giant doodle on the side of the house.  The owner saw it and remarked that is was a shame to cover it up. "And the guy painting with me, a sweetheart of a guy said, 'yeah, he's an artist but doesn't know it'". The dime dropped but he still wasn't ready.  "There was a lot of stuff to uncover...and my refusal to look at the purpose of being alive...because it was so painful."

        The only art Dan had allowed to slip out were the wooden jig saw puzzles in animal shapes he created for his kids.  A few images continued to come, but on rare occasion.

        Several more years passed and one day in the late 1990's, after a divorce, time away from the drugs and bottle, and many years of rearranging his inner world, Dan picked up some wire and within a few minutes had created a fully formed man, perfectly proportioned.  "It took me a while to get around to it. But, I knew I could do it all along."

        Creating wire sculpture and paper mache sculpture is fun for him, "it's the doing I enjoy, if someone likes it they can take it out of my house". His work is a way for him to play with his imagination.  "The fun part is changing an object from one thing, like a clothes hanger, to an elephant. When it's over, I'm done with it. I move on to something else."  He loves to make things that make him laugh. And then? "Go on, take it, get it out of here."  When asked abut an artist statement Dan stared at us.  Really hard. "Why do we have to do this?"  Okay, moving on...

        An image of Dan's large paper mache Rhino mother and her baby were used as examples for the "Paper Mache" entry in the 'Artist's Illustrated Encyclopedia: Techniques, Materials, and Terms' by Phil Metzger.

        Dan used to live near the gallery in a house inundated with his imagination. Two years ago he sold everything in the house and embarked on an extended trip to Viet Nam and Thailand. 
 

                                                                        D. Page