Born in Missoula, Montana; lives and works in Helena, Montana.

EDUCATION

BS, Civil Engineering, Montana State University

MLA, Landscape Architecture, Harvard University Graduate School of Design

AWARDS

Winning Proposal. “Grass Lantern Park”, City of Helena Competitive RFP for Public Art. Helena, Montana 2005

First Place. Competitive RFP for Memorial Sculpture, Holter Museum of Art. Helena, Montana 2005

First Place. Design Competition for the Lewis and Clark Botanical Garden. Missoula, Montana 1998

PUBLICATIONS/EXHIBITIONS

Richards digital images and 3D computer renderings have appeared in various magazines and books including Architecture, Land Forum and Martha Schwartz “Transfiguration of the Commonplace” as well as several design exhibitions.

BIO

Richard has long been drawn to the intersection of engineering, science, design, and fine art. While his academic studies focused on engineering and architecture, his enduring passion has always been about making art. He has maintained a lifelong studio practice, continually developing his skills through formal study and independent exploration.

Throughout his education, Richard pursued extensive training in painting and drawing at the University of Montana, Montana State University, the University of Washington, and Harvard University. His graduate studies at the Harvard Graduate School of Design further immersed him in contemporary art, critical discourse, and experimental studio practice. Because of this strong engagement with art and design theory, a master's degree from a leading design school such as the Harvard GSD is often regarded as comparable to an MFA in its creative rigor and studio-based approach.

Richard's work reflects this interdisciplinary background, drawing on principles from engineering, science, landscape architecture, and fine art.

ARTIST STATEMENT

In landscape architecture school, I was introduced to the concept of edge ecology, or the edge effect—the observation that when two ecosystems meet, they create a zone of ecological richness greater than either one alone. Rather than simply combining two environments, their interaction generates new complexity, diversity, and resilience. Instead of 1 + 1 = 2, the edge becomes 1 + 1 = 2 + n, where the n is the unexpected richness that emerges from the meeting of two worlds. The edge is not simply a boundary; but the place where most of the action is.

As a landscape architect/artist, I’ve come to see this principle everywhere. I am drawn to the boundary between the built and the natural world, where the ordered geometry of human construction meets the organic complexity of nature. These landscapes feel especially alive because neither order nor wildness fully prevails. Their interaction creates something neither could achieve alone.

The same dynamic extends beyond the landscape. We experience the world through the filters of memory, language, emotion, and culture, and it is at the edge between reality and perception that places acquire meaning. When cultures, disciplines, and ways of thinking intersect, they also generate new ways of seeing.

My artwork explores these threshold spaces—between the manmade and the natural, technology and ecology, observation and imagination, reality and perception. I see these in-between places not as divisions but as fertile ground, where ideas cross-pollinate, familiar categories dissolve, and new possibilities emerge. The edge is not where one thing ends and another begins; it’s where something richer is born.