in art history from the University of Chicago in 1975 and was enrolled in the Masters in General Studies in the Humanities program in 1976.
Warmus's philosophy of "Reticulate Aesthetics" considers the structure of art as a net or web, rather than a hierarchy."
Critic and curator Lydia Matthews, writing in American Craft Inquiry (“Daring to Dive Deeply: A Conversation about Craft Writing and Criticism” Volume One, Issue One, November 2016) observed that Warmus developed his theory of Reticulate Aesthetics partly as a response to the critical positions of Clement Greenberg: “To address this expansive complexity in the contemporary craft scene, Warmus increasingly recognized that Greenberg's focus on materiality and form alone no longer seemed viable.
Inspired by the kind of embodied knowledge acquired through experiences as a scuba diver, he began to envision a new way of looking at craft – one more akin to viewing the rich underwater world.
He described this analytical viewpoint as “reticulate,” which the Merriam-Webster dictionary defines as: “genetic recombination involving diverse interbreeding populations.” There is no judging “good,” “better,” “best” when comparing an octopus, shark, and a coral, so why would you want to impose hierarchical critical criteria to “species” in the craft world rather than seeing them as coexisting or hybridizing within a larger, more intricate ecosystem?