Artistic Journey and Early Work

My Journey into Sculpture

Not long after, my parents came to visit me, and we went to The Desert Museum where I viewed and was inspired by a Blue Heron on exhibit. I felt kinship to the creature after learning that it, like me, lives in both the desert of the Southwest as well as the marshlands of the central East coast. Beyond geographic connection, the gorgeous S-curve of the neck and the simple grace of the creature captured my imagination. Deep down, I knew then that I would be making a Blue Heron as my first large, life-sized sculpture.

In May of 2024, I moved back to Baltimore Maryland, where I had spent most of my life, to help my parents care for my elderly grandfather with dementia. I had greatly missed the East Coast, as well as the chaotic Love that Baltimore embodies. In spite of many difficulties I faced, Arizona taught me an astounding amount, including the skills to fully explore a brand new personal artistic medium:

Metal

I made four more roadrunners before leaving Tucson. Each one let me practice my layering style, gauge reactions, and observe how people interacted with the sculptures. Throughout this time, I found myself falling in love with “biomechanical” accents that could make a sculpture look as though it could actually move or function as a machine. Having spent much of my teens and early twenties in the goth and steampunk scenes, I realized that I could finally create the type of artwork that I had idolized for so very long.

After the Heron, my confidence grew, and I started to solidify my personal style with metal sculpture as a whole, rather than seeking to mimic some of my favorite metal artists' styles with my own subject matter as I had done in my very early work. I was growing more fond of copper and gradually more adept at solidly welding it into my pieces, which is not easy to do from a welder's/metallurgic standpoint.

The roadrunner is prominent and well loved in Arizona, much like the crab is in Maryland. Within a few months of having the roadrunner displayed at the bike shop, I had received very good feedback with lots of “ooohh’s and ahhhh’s” from most people I showed it to. I made another to see if it would sell and it did, nearly immediately.

My passion for these odd creations was growing fast, and I knew that I needed a steady source of scrap gears, sprockets, and chain to bring my budding visions to life. I started cold calling local bicycle shops and automotive shops for nearly 6 months before I found one willing to regularly give me their scrap, Roadrunner Bikes in Tucson. I soon after made them a roadrunner sculpture as a thank you. It was the first medium-sized sculpture I had done. It was quite a challenge for me, but I learned a lot and fell in love with the very strange process of it all.

After graduating welding school in Tucson, Arizona in 2021 during the pandemic, I used the time before the world restarted to play around with a small TIG welder I could use at home. I soon learned that I had a knack for metal sculpture and using small bits of scrap I had found or been given to create pieces. I soon began creating steampunk styled lamps and other, smaller sculptures from various parts as I practiced incorporating crystals and other materials into them.

Life became strange, and I found myself at Burning Man in the Summer of 2022. The work I saw there inspired me to take my art to a new scale and complexity. I began work on my Great Blue Heron shortly after returning home to Tucson. Simultaneously, I was having my first gallery showing at The DeGrazia Galery in the Sun, a well-known local gallery.

I began to think very consciously about shape, layering, and using copper and other types and alloys of metals as a color accents. It was a long, challenging piece but, much like my roadrunner, the knowledge gained throughout the process catapulted me into a much more refined artistic direction. I even had a local news station reach out to me for an interview about it and a couple other pieces that were being shown in a gallery at the time. As a self-taught artist just starting out, it was quite and honor for me.