Art is a calling. I first heard the calling at a young age on the shores of Otter Lake in northern Wisconsin. It was there that driftwood first spoke to me of beauty and power, motion and function. I have been a devotee ever since.

My life has been lived on a variety of bodies of water, and always there was driftwood to ponder and collect. But how to make a personal, meaningful, artistic statement with this medium eluded me for many years.

The fog lifted when I moved to San Juan Island in 1980. There I found inspiration on its beaches, an abundance of wood, and the impetus to teach myself how to make bandsaw boxes. My art career was launched.

I am a beachcomber. In the last twenty years I have spent more time exploring the fine line between sea and land than anyone else I know or have ever heard of. Those precious hours have influenced both my metaphysics and my art. What I come away with is a profound sense of the balance of nature. And it is that balance, that yin and yang, which I strive to represent in my woodworking.

No living tree has ever been cut to supply my material. The wood I collect lived out its life in the Pacific Northwest, died, fell into the water and washed up as flotsam. Fate makes our connection. What may appear as a series of random happenings is, in fact, synchronicity. Wood, long dead, overlooked and deemed unusable, is resurrected and given new life through art.

I do not impose a design upon the wood, but rather listen to it. What does it want to express? Where is the hidden box? How can I be its partner not its master? Thus, my boxes are one-of-a-kind, functional art pieces. Each has its own story to tell and message to convey. I am simply its conduit to the world.