Art has been part of my life since before there were words for it - building things from nothing, working alongside a father and grandfather in the woodshop before the age of ten, learning metalwork by twelve, discovering glass at sixteen. It was never a hobby. It was just how the world made sense.

That changed when military service took over at twenty-three. The art stopped. What followed were years of physical and mental health struggles that don't have easy names - the kind that take time, honesty, and patience to come back from.

Recovery opened a door back to creating, but differently. Growing up around farmland and riverfront, working the yard, watching things grow - that landscape never left. Neither did the example set by a mother who spent her career as a florist, then pivoted to something harder and more necessary: helping homeless and near-homeless people find stable housing, and later narrowing that focus to homeless veterans.

That's the thread that runs through this work. Aerosol on paper, canvas, sculpture - each piece is a view from somewhere real. A life lived close to the land, close to struggle, close to people who quietly do the right thing.

The hope is simple: that someone who's been through something similar sees themselves in it, and that someone who hasn't is moved to look a little closer at the world around them - and do something about it.