April, 2008                                                     Autobiography

    After graduation from CHS, I attended State University of New York, College at Cortland. I graduated in 1967 with a degree in Education with minors in biology, chemistry , physics and mathematics. I taught for one year in New York State, then moved to California and taught for four more years. During that period I accumulated 45 post-graduate hours of education.

    Disillusioned with the education system, I entered the business environment and spent the next several years as a training instructor for a sales team, then as a free lance trouble shooter for a few different businesses, doing everything from production to management.

    I finally found my way as a wildlife artist in 1983, doing bird and fish sculptures in wood. I have been self -employed as an artist ever since. I received over 30 awards and ribbons for my work, as well as numerous newspaper, magazine, and television appearances. 

    After fifteen years of doing art shows throughout the west, I opened a Woodcarving and Wildlife Gallery in Truckee, California in 1998. At that time, I became a willing victim of my own success.  I have struggled ever since to keep my own gallery shelves filled with my own carvings. 

    A few years after opening the Gallery , I was approached by the Donner State Park Museum to create a permanent display of all of the Fish of the Sierra Nevada, the first new display since opening 30 years prior. 

    Today, I continue to own and operate Vrooman Woodcarvings & Wildlife Gallery, in Truckee. California. I have a faithful following of over 4,000 collectors of my work. I continue to carve and sell nearly 400, carvings per year, nearly 9,000 in the past 25 years, in a price range from  $99 to over $12,000.  I have created a repertoire of over 135 native birds and about three dozen species of fresh water fish. 

    All of my carvings are done in sugar pine, and painted with oil stains, to allow the natural grain of the sugar pine to show through the realistic colors of the species.
 

I have a gallery website, in its infancy stages at:
http://www.vroomanwoodcarvings.com

My E-Mail address is: wfvrooman45@suddenlink.net

......William F. Vrooman