Connect What is your favorite type of art to create?

I love working with glass. Using all four elements to work at the same time is exciting to me. Melting earth with fire, shaping with breath and the use of gravity, then finally extinguishing what is not needed with water. For me glassblowing is a very centering and grounding practice. The ability to create any glass art pieces that fits into a fantastical world of my own creation brings me great joy. Though I enjoy painting and working with wood, my favorite pieces to make are glass.

Where do you find inspiration?

I'm very fortunate to find inspiration all around me. Living in Upstate SC the Blue Ridge Mountains are my backyard and my wife and I explore them often. Nature provides me the calm I need to reflect and in those moments I find the majority of my inspiration, the rest comes from people that inspire me. It could be anyone, my wife, a friend, or a stranger whom I see do a good deed for another. Inspiration can be found everywhere if our perspective is looking for it.

What would you do with $25,000?

This would be life changing money for me and my family. Most of it would be invested into my business to go toward equipment upgrades, new tools, an old pickup truck to help me transport Oxygen tanks and move my supplies around easier. The rest I would invest in myself by taking part in an apprenticeship. There are many talented artists that I would love to learn from. I would absolutely use this as a boon to take myself to another level.