Process

Life is a never-static progression of discovery and unfolding. In order to live engaged with this all-encompassing flow, I view everything that I do as a dynamic, constantly changing process. While I often strive towards a definite and specific end goal in my work, I try to honor uncertainty, chance, and the magic that emerges and unfolds if I remain open to it.

The initial and perhaps most important phase of a project begins with observation. Listening. Looking. Watching. Sensing. Feeling. Allowing the elements that are present in a given project – people, materials, environment, context – to express their truth.

Another core aspect of the way I see the world around me, and the process of discovering a design direction for a project is pattern recognition. How are the existing elements interacting with each other? What are the flows of people, energy, color, texture, season? What synthesizes or harmonizes here? What is out of sync, presenting an opportunity for greater alignment through design intervention?

Beauty

I believe beauty is a universally shared value and indeed a shared need. And somehow, as I travel the world and observe the aesthetic expressions of culture, I see how beauty sometimes takes a backseat to efficiency, speed and economy. This is especially true here in the United States.

And so it feels important to me to express the importance of beauty in our lives. In ways large and small. A beautiful meal, beautiful public buildings and spaces. Beautiful friendships and relationships. Beautiful domestic objects in our homes. Natural beauty in the green spaces, both wild and tamed, that surround the structured aspect of our lives.

Therefore, beauty remains a core aspiration for me in my work. If I can play a part in creating something beautiful that touches people’s lives and nourishes that core need in all of us to have beauty reflected back to us, I feel deeply fulfilled. Creation as service.

Organic Modern

I find inspiration in the interplay between the textures and energies of nature and the refinement of the modern world. My design aesthetic is something I’ve been developing through the ongoing process of making things, watching how they are used and how they age, how they harmonize with their surroundings, how they are maintained. I sometimes describe this aesthetic as organic modern.

I feel deeply called to the exploration of natural materials worked with care to create healthy, organic environments that feed our connection to the natural world. I look to the patterns and relationships in nature to inform my creative process. I believe that we are intimately connected to our environment. Therefor to honor the natural world is an essential act, necessary if we are to learn honor ourselves.

I also find myself attracted to the structure and order that underpin modern design- the comfort and ease provided in a well-conceived, well-executed modern home. I appreciate the conception of spaces from a contemporary point of view, taking into consideration lessons learned by those that have come before us.

Technological innovations, best practices in craftsmanship and technique, cultural knowledge, spiritual wisdom all converge in this moment offering us a perspective never before possible. As a designer, I live the question: how do we maximize advantage of this perspective in the creation of a resilient, restorative, abundant, joyful, peaceful future?

The Forest, The Trees, and Wood

I feel a strong personal connection to the trees. I suppose my love for them began in my childhood as I climbed and played within their strong limbs. Now, as a builder, I feel both an honor and a responsibility to use the wood that comes from their felled bodies with the utmost reverence. Wood is one of the most beautiful and satisfying materials I’ve worked with. The grain patterns, the smell, the feel against the skin, the warmth.

I use salvaged wood whenever possible. Not only because it reduces the pressure to remove more living trees from the forests of the world, but also because it is some of the highest quality, most beautiful wood available today, often cut from old-growth forests that simply don’t exist anymore.

I also endeavor to source wood locally wherever possible to reduce the environmental impact of long-range transportation and because I’m in love with the wide variety of trees that happen to grow in the ancient mountain forests of Western North Carolina where I live.

The Scale of the Sacred

At it’s highest, I see my work as extension of my spiritual path. I try to listen to that which moves through me and always seek the highest good in my making. I work across a range of scales from art, to furniture, to buildings, following my heart and my desire to create things that support the unfolding of a world that is more joyful, abundant and responsive to the evolution of consciousness.

There is a well-known quote “God is in the details”. In my work, as in my life, I endeavor to allow the details to coalesce as a refinement of the energies that make them possible. To me, the creative act is a balance of this allowing, this universal unfolding and the assertion of our unique impulses and desires- the evolution of possibility.

To create with love is divine. This is my aspiration.