Current Location:  Valdese, NC

Current profession / employment?   Full-time sculptor

Website:  www.farmsteadstudio.com

Where are you from originally? How long have you lived in your current location / profession?

I was born in Athens, Georgia.  My wife and I live near the blue ridge mountains of North Carolina in a 1840's farmhouse. We have side by side studios and a rescue dog named Waldo. Brenda is my life long inspiration

I built my first piece of furniture when I was six and have been making pieces ever since. After nearly forty years in the furniture industry, my job went to China. I started taking down barns. Most had already collapsed and I saved the pieces from being burned.  I made furniture out of the wood. I ended up with a lot of rusted tin roofing and incorporated this material in some of my furniture. For the past five years I have been creating one or two sculptures a year. 

What is your favorite medium, scale, genre/themes/body of work, etc? 

I work in rusted tin roofing. I build a wood frame and form the metal to it. I love the rich naturally weather textures and colors. It is meaningful to me to take a material that has lost it worth and revalue it into a piece that has new meaning and worth. My work ranges in scale from pieces that will fit in a garden setting to fairly large public art scale The material dictates the scale to some degree in that it forms better to a larger curve than a smaller arc. Now my art is mostly influenced by Gothic architecture, Celtic symbolism, and sacred geometry . My art use to be in the outsider art realm, where ever the voices led me. I was doing well in my art, not so much in my life . I had a mental breakdown . After awhile the bad voices went away, but the creative voices left with them. For several years I had no art. Slowly I started making quilting patterns out of wood. Learned how to weave Nantucket lightship baskets. My art evolved into making all the small pieces fit together where the lines and forms harmonized and resolved like a piece of music. Sometimes simple other times extremely complicated.

Who are your sculpture heros/heroines? What inuences your work the most?

I am not a trained sculpture, no BFA . I really like the work of Conrad Shawcross

What makes you want to keep on making sculpture / art?

To create a place of sanctuary in these trouble times for others and myself

What is your favorite tool?

Right-hand aviator snips

Do you have a favorite quote, or words of wisdom?

"Courage is getting up the next morning and doing better"