A melding of design and woodworking
My shop really starts with a personal story. I have done woodworking since I was a teenager working in my Dad's custom shop, but pursued a career as a graphic designer. My daughter was graduating from college and I decided to gift her with her late mother's rings with a gold necklace as a gift. I didn't have an appropriate box and decided to make a wooden box. I started experimenting more and more with blending my design and woodworking skills and hundreds of boxes and jewelry pieces later I am still going!
Everything is made in my shop/studio. I carefully select woods with interesting grains or contrasting colors and work them into objects that I enjoy and hope to share with others. I am particularly fond of native midwestern woods such as oak, sassafras, walnut, and cherry. I work with a blend of power tools and hand tools but find myself more and more using hand tools. They provide a certain connectedness with the wood that I really enjoy.
I work for myself full time as a woodworker, graphic designer, and photographer and find the newness of contemporary design created with computers and the timelessness of wood created with traditional techniques is a contrasting combo I truly love.
Some designs start on my computer screen, some in my head or sketchbook, and others just seem to evolve into being as I work!
