I have always been interested in making things, when I was a child I would spend countless hours in the forest, making swords and bows out of wood. From a young age I had a strong interest with fantasy and dragons. Drawing dragons is my first strong memory of making art. Somehow this lead into sculpting with duct tape, I would make wallets but made a few dragons out of tape as well. This is about the time I knew I wanted to spend my life creating.

Moving forward to my teenage years, I was an artsy weirdo that was not going to fit in with the average style high school of my home town. My friend then told me about “Tacoma School of the Arts” and after hearing what it was about, I applied and got accepted. This school gave me the artistic foundation that has lead my to become the artist I am today. I had some amazingly inspirational teachers and the freedom to create and express myself in the most authentic way. It was directly after this school that I discovered glass.

I had known about traditional glass blowing because of the glass museum in downtown Tacoma but it wasn’t until I walked into a newly opened headshop that I found out about lampworking. The color and shape of the pipes struck me and the owners told me about how all this was made using a torch. At 19 years old i knew exactly what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. Not long after this introduction this same head shop hired me to work weekends and I got to further my knowledge about glass. I hadn’t yet melted any yet but I knew that day would come soon enough.