upon a time, on the verdant central coast of mythical California, in a small city called Salinas,
plagued by dime store Cowboys, disgruntled Cholos and fields of lettuce, an artist was born. The
very same Salinas fled by John Steinbeck just as soon as he was able. It was 1963, and it would
be another eighteen years before Miles could leave this idyllic and nurturing cultural paradise, so
he quickly got down to the business of growing up.
He drew and he drew and he sculpted dinosaurs in playdough. He went to summer camps, and he rode horses, and went on nature hikes, and generally had the kind of childhood that one might believe all middle class American children have if they are fortunate. He took enormous pleasure in torturing his little sister Paige who screamed loud and as often as possible. He discovered Godzilla movies, and through them, Japanese culture. Star Trek {the original series} appeared on the scene and made his life quite a bit better. Monty Python provided a much needed source of intelligent humor. He poured through each issue of TV guide searching for late night sci-fi and horror flicks.Borrowing the family's Super-8 camera he made stop-motion movies. He attended that peculiar two year institution of psychological torture called 'Junior High School'
where hormone- crazed 13 and 14 year olds are isolated from society
and left to scar each other for life. Surviving this he went on to attend High School,
where he failed at math, and counted the seemingly endless days until he would be free.
He had a great art teacher there. He discovered Heavy Metal magazine,
special effects make-up, and the Beatles. Somewhere along the line 'Star Wars' exploded into
his reality like a cinematic Messiah, changing western culture in a way yet to be acknowledged
by sociologists, and brightened the path. One day a series of Time-Life books on the great
masters of European Art arrived in the mail, and the young Miles experienced an emotional
connection to artists of the past who painted naked people. Somewhere along the way he
fell in love with a young female artist named Adriana, and together they grew and helped
reassure each other that there was something larger waiting for them outside the soul-numbing
layer of gray fog that forever covered the stagnant body of Salinas like a shroud.
In 1983, after having served the bulk of his sentence, he was released for good behavior and
promptly moved to Los Angeles. Hot, sprawling, creative, energetic, fascinating, eternally sunny
Los Angeles. Not knowing any better, he took all of his parent's limited resources and attended
'Art Center College of Design' in smoggy Pasadena enrolled as an Illustration major. A year later
the money ran out. Art Center is very, very expensive.
In a stroke of fate Rob Bottin hired the young artist to work as a concept illustrator on a landmark fantasy film called 'Legend'. Getting paid to draw 12 hours a day can improve ones skills at an alarming rate. Miles never went back to Art Center. He continued to work with Mr. Bottin on several more movies before he finally wised up to the fact that he was being used. To this day he still has nothing to show for all the films he worked on in this period, except his own good word.
His path was suddenly joined by that of a brilliant, exotic and quite tempestuous Persian girl named Fahimeh. Things got wild and woolly for a while. Listening to an inner voice telling him to follow his sculptural impulses, he attended Long Beach State College for a semester. Student loans drying up, he took a job working for a young company in Orange County that made robotic Dinosaurs for Museums called 'Dinamation'. Many giant Dinosaurs were sculpted here, new friends were made, good times were had, corporate politics were explored, and far too many dangerous carcinogenic chemicals were inhaled. It was now 1989, he grew antsy living amongst the vapid republicans down behind the Orange curtain, and it was time to move on.
An opportunity arose to work on a computer game with an old friend, and the still relatively
young artist reluctantly accepted the offer. It was a chance to get in on the bottom floor
of the new and exciting world of home computer entertainment and, allegedly, make
enormous and liberating amounts of money- the kind of money that could set an artist
free from the constraints of whoring himself forever for the sake of a paycheck! Alas,
it was not to be the case. One cannot escape prostitution by prostituting oneself.
The project dragged on for 5 years straining the sanity of all involved until, disillusioned
and in debt, Miles finally left to return to that which his strange skill set seemed to best
suit- the special effects make-up business.
Back in Hollywood he undertook the long slow process of trying to increase ones value and reputation in a small, competitive, and unsteady freelance marketplace. Stan Winston hired him to work in his big, fat studio and many murky lessons were learned on Machiavellian subterfuge. When given the chance, human beings will behave like weasels!! He worked long hours making his employers rich and paying off his own debts. He bounced around from one part of the business to another, increasing his skills, client base and his net worth until, low and behold, the Gods took pity upon our little hero and tossed him a scrap from their tables. Soon came a house in Burbank, then, after much hard work, a bigger house in the Hills. A Boston Terrier or two, arrived on the scene, providing a constant source of comic relief.