I grew up on a farm in rural New Hampshire, keeping myself busy by burying myself in academics and extra-curricular activities, and generally anything that kept me from having to do manual labor.  I took acrobatics classes and after proving that I could endure a whole season on the football team, I made the switch to cheerleading.  This made me feel at home- I was doing what felt right to me and doing it quite well, capturing several championship titles with my high-school team, eventually traveling all over the US and Europe to perform.  Soon after, I would take my chances sneaking to the fabric section at Wal-Mart and making my own clothes from the loudest fabrics I could find.  The fake silver eyelashes and feather boa followed, in retrospect not always good fashion decisions, but I learned that it is fun to take risks and defy conventions.  As you can imagine, the old fashioned country town was not the best place for me to express that side of myself.

My hard work helped me to complete course work at Brown, Dartmouth, Glasgow University, and Harvard, where I took pre-medicine courses.  I graduated from Brown in 2001 with a degrees in Fine Arts and Philosophy.  My pre-med courses have since played an integral role in the inspiration for my work as an artist.

A painter by training, I opened a digital print shop after discovering the rich possibilities of hybrid prints- whereby all the methods of painting, printmaking, and photography are blended into the computer, printed, and then re-worked by hand.  The idea that digital art reduces everything you see to bits of code fascinates me, and in an effort to subvert that I try to work back into many of my prints after they are completed.  Another thing about digital work that inspires me is that, with painting, when it comes time to make a choice about the direction you will take, it is often irrevocable.  With digital art, you can take a work to follow as many different paths as you want and save them as different files.

In 2003 I decided to make a handbag out of one of my prints rather than to put it in a frame.  This got me thinking about how expansive the limits of painting could be if you imagined putting original fine art works into everyday objects.  I like the play on the relationship between art and life.  I sold that first bag immediately, and needed no more encouragement than that.  Soon after I was spending all my extra time making bags.

At this point, my handbag project is taking off, but I am still committed to treating each piece as a work of art.  I develop a relationship with each bag.  I sew by hand, I don’t use stamps to punch out each piece of material, and as I do much of the work myself, I am critically involved in each step of the production process.  For now, I can handle all this.  As an artist I wish to always have a forum, and not to crank out work at a huge volume only to make things that aren’t special.  I envision myself having a long career, staying inspired, and filling each piece I make with passion and joy.