Artist Statement

I make art as a form of mediation. To create is to receive the water of life in leaky buckets, to gorge on joy found in the cracks of sidewalks, to find keyholes in tree trunks, and to hum with rocks. 

The mind-body-spirit-soil connection is central to my work. This is why I work primarily with hand-carved relief printing blocks. With knives and chisels I carve blocks into symbols. These symbols–perhaps a red torii gate, a set of plastic vampire teeth, or a bison–serve as physical totems of memories and ideas. When I create large compositions from multiple smaller printing blocks, it yields unique works of art that are both 1-of-1 originals and part of a broader family of works with recurring symbols that comprise my personal folk art. Different combinations form different narratives, aesthetics, and meanings, and I call this approach composable design.

Imagine sitting at a large table with a hundred wooden printing blocks of trees, animals, rocks, and houses laid around a single piece of crisp handmade Japanese washi paper. This is where the concept of fermentation–a seemingly spontaneous bubbling up–arises, as I hand press a dozen or so of those onto the paper. I usually do not know what will happen, but I am guided by principles of visual harmony and storytelling–and unconscious forces. 

I call my source of inspiration the wordless place. Its doorways are found in dreams, on hikes, by great poetry, during yoga, sometimes in a dram of scotch, and often through creating art. To me, it is a real place of metaphysical geography. My wordless place teems with sleek Bauhaus cafes tucked under foggy wabi-sabi mountains. And in them my favorite writers–like Le Guin, Hesse, Tolkien, Vonnegut, and Whitman–discuss history, archetypes, philosophy, and the future of life, until temple bells call them to rest.

My work probably best falls into the Sōsaku-hanga school of “creative printmaking,” based on my love of zen design aesthetics and training in wood block printmaking at the Mokuhanga Innovation Lab in Echizen, Japan. My time in this ancient papermaking village sparked an admiration for handmade washi paper, which I use whenever I can.

I’m grateful for the privilege to make art, and for the support of my patrons. I have pledged 10% of all my sales to charities working on animal welfare, conservation, and human flourishing.