Being around builder parents was part of my experience, whether Dad was building a canoe or Mom was rehabbing a house, they always seemed to have a project going.  My favorite came when I was about 10 or 11 years old when my parents bought a raw wooded lot on Linkhorn Bay in Virginia Beach. I watched and helped as my parents roughly cleared the property and envisioned the new home that they would build.  I had been around construction sites for most of my life by this point, but this one was special because of the mix of building, tidewater, and woods to explore. A dream for a young guy - I remember digging for Blackbeard's treasure and exploring the woods and swamp that surrounded the cove we lived on. 

Middle school at the Friends School of Virginia Beach gave me my first experiences in shop woodworking and ceramics. Beginning with the woodshop classes,but bored with the routine projects and lack of enthusiasm, I tried a ceramics class the following year. Through the Quaker school method I made a great connection with the teacher and started to learn a new way to express myself. A class trip took us to Philadelphia where Teacher Sid made sure we had a side trip to Wharton Esherick’s home studio….I was hooked!  Esherick's studio left a great impression on my memory. The spiral staircase, randomly set flooring, curving roof line; everything felt like it was curved or sculpted in some way. I went home and let my parents know that I planned on being an artist! Well, that didn't go over well.

By the time I entered high school I was all about boats and being on the water. I remained friends with Teacher Sid and visited his pottery studio from time to time - I loved being in the studio, we discussed art, and he encouraged my creativity. I started taking drafting classes and began to think of architecture as a career field and continued these classes through high school. 

My path continued to evolve. Looking at what to do after graduation I stumbled upon some wooden boat schools in Maine. My parents were reluctant to let me pursue this dream due to the fact it was far away from home for my age. However, my Dad and I took a long weekend together, exploring the coast line of Maine from Kennebunk all the way to Brooklin, stopping at schools along the way. Visiting these shops with wooden boats resting on their keels being hand built was really exhilarating to me. I was able to convince my parents this is what I wanted to do and they agreed I could attend the Landing School of Boat Building and Design. I completed the one-year yacht design course, and started using these skills when I needed to take a job.

Still looking for my next move, and deciding to continue work or attend college, I found a VCU course catalogue. As I thumbed through the book I came across some woodworking and furniture classes and was thrilled. Here was a college course of study that seemed to be exactly what I wanted to learn. I called the university and found out times when the classes would be open and then I drove to Richmond armed with my technical drawings from high school and the Landing School hoping to meet with the instructor. I feel like it was meant to be, because I was able to catch Bill Hammersley in the studio that day. He was very nice and took the time to look at my drawings and listen to what I had to say and he asked me if I had any other art experience. I didn't, but he encouraged me to apply anyway and asked me to let him know when I applied by sending him copies of my technical drawings.  I received my acceptance package and enrolled in the Art Foundation Program for fall of 1989 classes. VCU  was a great fit right off the bat when I started my core classes the following fall. Learning woodworking was a long process and the mistakes could be catastrophic, but after a few semesters I started to gain ground making furniture. By my senior year I was in the studio making furniture and didn't want the experience to end.

After graduation I took a job in a custom cabinet shop, but as a diversion in my own time and still very interested in wooden boats, I found a space to build a cedar strip canoe: the owner of Legend Brewing  in Richmond, Virginia, let me have space while he developed the brewery. We shared this common interest and often sat with others enjoying a good beer and waxing poetic about wooden boats.

By 1995 I found a job in Annapolis, Maryland and I was doing it!! I was a member of a crew that built two boats, both based on the Hooper Island Draketail – one of the first power boat forms on the Chesapeake Bay.  We were all responsible for our individual projects, on custom refits and yacht furniture, and I took part in building large laminated wooden parts for these round stern boats.  This is where I really began doing radius work and I was loving it. My skill level grew rapidly while at this shop In my own time, I was also pursuing my interest in building my own furniture and while in Annapolis, I was invited to participate in two group exhibitions at the Meredith Gallery in Baltimore. This is where I sold my first piece of furniture art: a nightstand called TAZ.

I next moved to the outer banks of North Carolina possessed by the idea of building wooden sport fishing boats. These boats ranging from 65' to 85' were wood-framed boats planked with Atlantic white cedar. The old man and his son laid out the keel and frame and a crew of about three or four of us planked the boat and prepped the hull ready for systems and finish. My station on the finish crew was the cockpit and cabin house. This was a really low key job, the pace was moderate and the lifestyle was easy. It seemed like no big deal that we were building multi-million dollar boats in barns over the tidal water, which flooded from time to time. When the storms came, if a piece of floor came up we just nailed it back down. There was one rumor that once a storm had been so bad it took the entire floor and left the boat floating in the water. 

In the summer of 2004 I was asked by a college friend to come back to the Richmond area and build cabinetry and furniture in his shop in Goochland County. The lure of more steady work called me and in 2005 I officially moved back to the Richmond area. Shortly after, I was approached by the Virginia Department of Forestry to work with some wood that they were studying for commercial use by designing and building a piece of furniture for their main office in Charlottesville. I took this opportunity to open my own studio. I designed and built a bench for the department’s main office in Charlottesville and continued to build in my studio, creating unique furniture pieces, entire kitchens, and sculptural objects. I also found work using my boatbuilding skills in Deltaville and used my building and cabinetry skills to install kitchens and other cabinetry, while building a dedicated studio/workshop on my property. In 2013 I was awarded a public commission from S.U.N.Y college at Brockport. After answering a call to furniture makers for benches and end tables, I proposed three designs for each category, provided written statements, pricing, and scaled sketches for each piece. I was awarded one of the fifteen benches and the only table by the committee. The wood to be used was part of their green building protocol, where trees felled for building projects are repurposed into usable furniture for the students, faculty and visitors to use daily. My bench provides seating in a busy hallway and my table is in use in the Dean’s office.

My aesthetic is coming from the background of curved and round forms from my boatbuilding experience and inspiration from the organic forms of Esherick. I still draw my designs mechanically with paper and pencil and sketch whenever inspiration strikes in addition to when I am contacted for a new commission.   

In 2017, a designer named Jomo Tariku found me while searching for a fabricator for a chair with only a conceptual three-dimensional rendering. This began a rich collaboration where Jomo and I worked side by side in my workshop to develop a method to produce this now iconic chair, Nyala. The complex shapes and forms of this beautiful design required unusual shaping and joining techniques. The partnership with Jomo through 2023 resulted in the production of the chairs Nyala, Meedo, and MeQuamya, his sculptural stool series, and the Meedo bench. These pieces put my radius work techniques and finishing skills to the test in providing the curves and shapes of the designs. Works from this collaboration were purchased by numerous institutions including the Denver Art Museum, LACMA, The MET, and the Dallas Museum of Art.

I continue to design and build furniture from my own aesthetic and visions as well as accept private commissions.

My work has been shown in exhibitions including:

• CraftForms, Wayne Arts Center, Wayne, Pennsylvania

• Made in Virginia, Virginia Museum of Modern Art Virginia Beach, Virginia

• Highpoint Market with The Mill Collective at Red Egg House, Highpoint, North Carolina

• “Furnished”, Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art, Winston-Salem, North Carolina

• Artfields, Lake City, South Carolina – won a State Award, Virginia

• Craft + Design Show presented by Visual Arts Center, Richmond, Virginia

• “Sitting Pretty: The Chair Re-Envisioned”, Moss Arts Center, Blacksburg, Virginia

• Rassawek Spring Jubilee, steam bending demonstration, Goochland County, Virginia 

• Made in RVA Handcrafted Furniture & Lighting Show and Sale, LaDiff, Richmond, Virginia

• Crozet Fall Festival Crozet, Virginia 

• RVA MAKERFEST steam bending demonstration, Science Museum, Richmond, Virginia 

• Arts in the Park, Richmond, Virginia 

• “Home”, The Furniture Society Member’s Exhibition, Durham, North Carolina 

• Fine Contemporary Craft of the Southeastern US, Artspace, Raleigh, North Carolina

• “Please Be Seated”, Meredith Gallery, Baltimore, Maryland

• “Made in Maryland”, Meredith Gallery, Baltimore, Maryland