Jean-Jacques Gaudel (born April 28, 1946 in Luzy, France) is a multi-media artist and designer. Guadel attended the College Bonaparte in Autun and the Institut National des Sciences Appliquées in Lyon, where he trained as a mechanical engineer, graduating in 1967. Gaudel worked in petroleum exploration in Indonesia before he gave up his job and came to the United States in 1972 for an extended road trip and photo safari. He and a friend shipped a Volkswagen camper with its own dark room to New York and began driving. In Birmingham he met a French student who could arrange for a visit to Uruguay. During that visit, he met Rachel, whom he married in 1974 and settled in Birmingham. Gaudel began painting in 1981 and turned to full time art production in 1984. He started making sculpture in 1998 and currently he works mainly with digital media. He and Rachel built their own house on Warwick Drive on Red Mountain, utilizing large pre-cast masonry blocks. From 2004 to 2006 he constructed a wooden bi-plane, the Spiritus Tomas. Gaudel's artwork is represented by Monty Stabler Galleries in Birmingham and at Le Mieux Galleries in New Orleans, Louisiana. He has been a featured artist for the Paint the Town Red art event benefitting the American Red Cross. The event has special meaning for him because his father, a former German prisoner-of-war, was a lifelong supporter of the Red Cross. (Wikipedia)