The Artist and Artwork

Artist Statement

Originally from the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, today I live on the road, selling my handcrafted 2D and 3D mixed media artwork at art fairs across the country with my wife and business partner Ali Marie. Home will always be Virginia, but my studio is currently located in Denver (Englewood), Colorado.

My artwork represents the intersection of my rural, Southern upbringing with my love for storytelling and found objects. I handcraft each work from the array of materials I’ve been salvaging and collecting since I was a child. My portfolio is vast, styles and mediums quite varied, but most of my artwork could fall under the categories of collage and/or assemblage. Lately, I’ve been producing large-scale paper collage portraits of American icons and animalia entirely from hand-cut vintage paper elements. I like to spend time reminiscing on the past while flipping through the pages of decades forgotten magazines, intently searching for the perfect shape, color, or texture within a periodical’s pages to add to my archive of collage elements. I’ve become increasingly precise and intricate over the years; my latest large-scale paper collages feature thousands of individually hand-cut pieces.

Likewise, my more dimensional pieces, such as my faux taxidermy series, are founded in similar collage and assemblage techniques. Like my collage work, these works are united by the labor-intensive processes involved in their construction: hand-carving wood forms, flattening metal with a mallet, cutting hundreds of metal strips with tin snips, smoothing and sanding rough elements with a metal grinder. These tactile wall-sculptures are replete with a dense array of found material, ranging from the industrial to the organic, all gathered in my travels cross-country for art fairs.

In my own estimation of the artwork I produce, I believe my artistic process originates at the moment I begin rummaging through an abandoned barn, a derelict warehouse, or a gnarly industrial scrapyard. To me, these places are veritable treasure chests of artistic materials and, as an artist, I’m lucky enough to have a job that sets me on cross-country road trips on a regular basis. These locations allow me to discover vast bounties of discarded and historical items inspiring the work that I produce in unique and often unexpected ways. Each piece of art I produce contains material truly special to me for its ability to tell a story and stir wonder for the rugged American landscape.