J.C.LEISSRING Jack Leissring was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in 1935, attended primary and high school there and entered the University of Wisconsin in 1953, earning a Bachelor of Science in Medical Science, a Master of Science in Anatomy and a Doctor of Medicine (honors) in 1961. Internship and service in the US Navy and residency in Pathology at Stanford. He held teaching positions at Stanford and U. C. San Francisco. In 1969, he came to Santa Rosa, Ca and was a pathologist at Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital for 31 years, retiring in 2000 to spend full time pursuing the demands of J. C. Leissring Fine Arts. He was elected president of the Sonoma County Medical Association in 1974 and formed the Sonoma County Medical Society in 1975. Leissring began collecting art in 1948; the Fine Art business began in 1970. An interest in jazz, improvisational music stems from his high school years, where he spent some time playing with fellow students who have remained as close friends since that time. During his years at the University, Leissring founded several successful groups, ranging from an early quintet, a very long standing trio and quartet which played regularly at Madison's famous "Tiger Lounge," broadcasting on Friday nights on a local FM station. During his naval episode, he studied architectural drafting and architecture by correspondence. Over the span of his life, he has designed and built over 25 houses, buildings and remains an avid cabinet-maker and wood worker. He studied for almost two decades with a master teacher of harmony and piano: Wm, Allaudin Mathieu, author of the most significant book on harmony in the last 100 years. He has written several books, many poems and essays. He studied printmaking with Dean Meeker over the course of about ten years. His interest in sculpture also follows from studies with Meeker. He has designed and worked in stained glass, woodcut, draws every morning, paints in acrylic. As a youth, he had great interest in 'ham' radio in the days before the transistor revolution and continues to experiment in electronics. All of his innumerable computers were constructed by hand. For years, he had an active photographic darkroom, now replaced by software image manipulation. He counts his father and grandparents as his greatest influences. His father, "through selfless kindness and his lifelong devotion to my welfare, my grandparents, for doing the day-to-day work of raising what must have been a difficult young lad at times." "My grandfather was very widely read, devoured Schopenhauer and no-one in our family, to my saving, ever set foot in a church. Perhaps this explains my lack of xenophobia and universal love of humanity--except for Dick Cheney and George Bush."