It’s invigorating this movement between worlds where my work rests in intellectual pursuits or in the labor of my hands. My father repeatedly reminded me that anyone with time and patience can learn to draw. What really matters, he said, “is knowing how to look.” 

Brought up moving between the Roman Catholic and Presbyterian churches, it’s been easy for me to flow between faith traditions. As a kid I was given free range to the bottom floor of my dad’s studio, which was largely a woodshop where he prepped masonite, framed paintings, and built crates. After testing me on hand tools, he taught me to use an array of power tools. I relish the time we had creating things together.  

At Samford University, my Southern Baptist alma mater, I got friendly with fundamentalists and evangelicals as I studied business finance. I carried Hustin Smith’s The World's Religions in my backpack as I wandered into other cultures.  After wrangling horses in Wyoming and cowboying in Montana, I headed back East for schooling at Princeton Theological Seminary. With that diploma in hand, I zagged back West to a ranch working with youth from Los Angeles. I relapsed into my vagabonding ways before scooping up a Masters degree in Sociology at the University of Wyoming. I found gainful employment as a carpenter through all my academic adventures and learned to weld while working on ranches. It wasn't until I landed back in the mountains of North Carolina that I got turned on to blacksmithing and entered Haywood Community College’s Blacksmithing program and ABTech’s welding courses.