I am descended from a long line of artists and craftspeople - painters, woodworkers, inventors, designers, and tinsmiths. Oddly, though, as I grew up, I never considered myself an artist. I didn’t know what to do with a blank page or a lump of clay. But I always loved making things: tinkering in my dad’s woodshop, building with LEGO, and all kinds of crafts.

I channeled my creativity into design. I studied Product Design at Stanford, which was a wonderful mix of mechanical engineering and visual design. I then built a career that spanned many design disciplines. I designed interactive exhibits for science and history museums; I designed logos, graphics, and printed materials for a wide variety of businesses; I designed computer equipment and consumer products; and for the bulk of my career I worked with tech startups as a User Experience Designer, helping to invent new products and make them easy to use. Most notably, I served as the Creative Director for Pandora Music and helped introduce internet radio to the world.

It wasn’t until my mid-40s that I discovered my way into art. The path led through the lens of a camera - a digital SLR that had been gifted to me by a dear friend. It was, quite literally, eye opening. Rather than starting with a blank canvas, I could start with the WHOLE world, and then narrow down my field of view until I found the details that most interested me. It turned out those details were often overlooked or ignored by most people, and beautiful treasures to me. I began to understand the way I had always seen the world, and to document it so others could see what I saw.

I love making photographs, and I have always been driven to make them into objects in their own right. This led, perhaps inevitably, to sculpture, as I explored ways to make my images into more than just a flat surface. Rather than photographing rusty objects, I began to collect them like a 5-year-old hoards detritus in their pockets. Then I began turning those pieces of others’ trash into true treasures. My Wood+Rust series is a perfect representation of this instinct. Each piece is a single rusted object (or in some cases a collection of similar objects) that I have elevated to the status of “treasure” by mounting or framing it with beautiful, clear maple.

The meaning of art, for me, is in the making. Whether it is a photograph, or a rusted object, or a collection of keys, I most enjoy the process of finding the subject and inventing the presentation. I use all of my design skills to create these compositions. I am an artist.