Tell a little bit about how you first got into creating art.

Making in general and wanting to see an idea come into fruition has almost always played a role in my life. I give a lot of credit to my grandparents who were very creative people, engaging my siblings and I in ceramics and woodworking projects at an early age. I loved how inspired they were in pursuing passion projects, and I carry those moments & memories with me today. They instilled lessons about acceptance of mistakes and pushing yourself to take away new ways to approach a vision from every creative endeavor.

What artists or movements have had an impact on you?

The artists & creatives that I look up to the most these days are Tony Cragg, Leonard Drew, Gustav Klimt, Amanda Williams, Zaha Hadid, Jeremy Fish, and James Jean.
All of these figures are able to create work that conveys a clean execution of a very specific idea, which to me defines great work. There’s a huge difference between seeing a piece where the artist managed to convey & capture their full vision v. work where you can see that the craft was just not quite there. While I try to work within my own skillset in order to meet this condition of what I feel is “clean execution”, I know that there’s always more to learn.

What themes does your work involve?

The latest body of work I feel is focused around the celebration of materials and trying to find ways to flip how a given material presents itself naturally. Making geometric shapes out of trees, and making flowy floral shapes out of sheet steel. I find a lot of joy in pairing these together to make work that appears both organic and coldly manufactured.

What is important to you about the visual experiences you create?

I think the work presented here aims to capture the general energy conveyed by plants but without the real desire to actually render any specific one. Mimicking shapes and forms within urban infrastructure is also a feature that I hope is conveyed within the sculpture bases, as it’s generally constructed out of simple forms and clean edges.

What is the significance of medium and color?

Mediums or materials within my avenue of sculpture are a huge area of fascination. Spending plenty of time in exotic hardwood stores exposed me to the range of tones that wood can present from dark purples, strawberry pinks, rich browns, greens, and pale yellows all can be brought together in a unique palette. The metal side of things is mainly all about the finish. Shiny or matte. Using strictly mild steel across the lasercut work and the work with bar presents can present something that looks enduring and delicate.

Do you work from memory, life, photographs, or from other resources? Describe your creative process.

I collect art books from the artists I find inspiring, as well as books on ornamentation. Ye Olde drawings from the Darwin days are also fascinating, mainly because of the technique. There’s also a considerable amount of time that I spend using vector graphics and 3D design programs to iterate around certain ideas. Lots of physical drawing. Lots of reflecting and stepping back. There’s a rush from completing a piece that fades into questioning, “what have I done”, that I find amusing and motivating that ultimately pushes the work in a new direction.

What is your favorite art accident? Did it change your perspective?

Metal and wood can be forgiving and rather unforgiving depending on the techniques that you choose to use. Whether those mistakes can be spun into a new idea is entirely dependent on how bad the mistake was. Making furniture where the fit and tolerances are paramount had to have been the most frustrating sets of projects I’ve worked on. Most accidents present lessons or new ways to execute certain shapes, and within the woodworking especially, there’s always another approach.