Contact Information
21 Stow Road
Harvard, MA, 01451
e-mail: geoffrey@koetsch.com
Phone and Fax: 978.456.3459
Biography
I was born in Cleveland, Ohio in1941. My father was in finance my mother was a primary schoolteacher. My sister Nancy, also an artist, lives in Colorado. When I was eight years old the family moved to Milwaukee.
I studied theater at the University of Wisconsin in the early 60's. In my junior year I was dating a dance student who introduced me to contemporary dance. Merce Cunningham was at his peak then, and Alwin Nikolais. I was excited the power of the human body as an expressive medium.
After receiving my undergraduate degree in theater I decided on a career in visual art and in 1967 got an MFA from the University of Illinois.
I moved to Boston and began teaching at the Art Institute of Boston (now the Art Institute at Lesley University). I rented a storefront studio in Jamaica Plain and started doing figure sculpture, something for which I had had no training because the figure was not systematically taught in art schools in those days. I was drawn to trends in the field of fashion photography: thin, angular models in tension filled poses. In the mid-eighties I took up photography.
I spent a year in Paris taking pictures, studying the European art scene and writing art reviews for the Paris Metro.
Back in Boston at the end of the decade, I began the practice of Yoga--its introspective poses have became a sort of leitmotif for my recent work. In 1986 I married Elizabeth Rotter. We had a son, Nikolaus, who was diagnosed with Cystic Fibrosis, an event that had a profound impact on my spiritual outlook on life.
After a trip to Japan In the mid 90's I took up the study of Zen Buddhism under the guidance of Daien Hifu at the Wild Goose Zendo in Concord Massachusetts.
I currently live and work in Harvard Massachusetts with my wife Elizabeth who is a graphic designer and principal of Studio-e Design. I have two sons: The oldest, Julien, is an animator living in Brooklyn. My younger son, Nikolaus, lives with us at home.