James R. Dabbert
James R. Dabbert, a Senior Lecturer at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, is an author and the editor of The Indiana Dunes Revealed, The Art of Frank V. Dudley, an exhibition catalog published by the Brauer Museum of Art, Valparaiso, Indiana, and the University of Illinois Press, 2006. He has also written several magazine articles on Dudley for American Art Review. A native of Michigan City, Indiana, he grew up exploring the Lake Michigan shoreline dunes and nearby Mount Baldy, now part of Indiana Dunes State Park. He saw his first Dudley painting, Jack Pine—The Patriarch during his grade school years on a Saturday morning visit to the Michigan City Public Library. A high school field trip to Cowles Bog in the Dunes sparked his interest in environment issues and an awareness of the political struggle to establish the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore in the 1960s. Following his graduation from Indiana University, he taught in southern Africa before returning home and relocating to Chicago.