A life of curiosity.
Artist, inventor, educator, and public speaker. Part autobiography, part workbench inventory. The shortest account is that I have kept following questions from one field into another.
Before the blocks, there were drawings.
I grew up around construction. I studied aerospace engineering at Embry-Riddle, then moved toward studio art, graduating from Knox College in 1989. It was not so much a change of subject as a search for a different way of understanding form.
After college, I spent time living in a yurt in a Maine forest, studying nature and making diagrams. I called one developing set of ideas Y-Theory: a personal investigation into how repeating units and simple rules can give rise to growth and structure.
The diagrams and questions stayed with me as I moved into teaching, painting and eventually invention.
Edited autobiographical copy assembled from Michael's CV and interviews. Dates and details should be reviewed before public release.
Not a straight line.
Engineering questions
Aerospace studies at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University.
Art becomes the lens
BA in Studio Art from Knox College, Galesburg, Illinois.
The Maine yurt
Extended independent inquiry into natural form, pattern, growth and representation.
Art and teaching in Chicago
Classroom teaching, painting, murals and exploration of hands-on pedagogy.
Acerra Studios
A studio practice centered on portraiture, drawing, painting, sculpture and art instruction.
Lux Blox begins
Michael and Heather Acerra launch a construction system inspired by movable geometry and nature's structural grammar.
Mathematics meets art
Workshops and publications at the Bridges conferences; national recognition for Lux Blox.
Toward structural literacy
Published reflections on Y-Theory and ongoing development of Structure Smart as an educational approach.
The painter never disappeared.
Portraiture and painting are not the prologue to the work on geometry. They belong to the same story: observation, the practiced hand, the strange dialogue between what is seen and what is imagined.
In the Commedia drawings, self-mockery opens a different register. In the structural diagrams, the same habit of looking becomes more analytical. Both are ways of paying attention.
Explore the art and notebook archive ↗In good company.
Lux Blox is a partnership with Heather Acerra, co-founder and CEO. The work has also involved students, educators, researchers, manufacturers and curious people across disciplines.
The website will gradually document those collaborations and the people whose ideas helped shape the journey, always with proper credit.
View projects and collaborations ↗