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All of my work is inspired by my love of nature and fantasy. I have been making art for as long as I can remember (I would spend hours drawing in the woods behind the house I grew up in), but I never really started experimenting with sculpture until about a year after I graduated college; I bought a block of polymer clay on a whim, just to play around with, and immediately fell in love with it.
I still alternate between two-dimensional art and sculpture, but my focus has shifted primarily toward miniature sculpture because I can incorporate physical objects I find in nature (stones, shells, wood, acorns, pinecones) into it. I love the idea of creating physical creatures you can hold in your hands that look like something someone might have found in a forest, like a little nature spirit. It allows people to bring a little strangeness and wildness into their homes.
It's hard to pinpoint specifically where my ideas come from, but when I find myself lacking creative inspiration, it helps to take a step back from the art for a day or two and focus on spending time outdoors, reading, and listening to music that inspires me; even if the specific concept behind a particular piece of art is difficult to articulate, it always draws life from the things that bring me joy.
Because they vary so much in size and level of detail, my sculptures can take anywhere from an hour to a week or more to finish. I have always loved creating miniature objects/art, so all of my pieces are still quite small.
I think the part of the creative process I enjoy the most is simply the physical act of creating something. It's incredibly relaxing and meditative to sit with a bit of clay and figure out what personality it wants to have.
Despite stories, storytelling, and myth being such a large inspiration behind my art in a general sense, there is rarely a specific story behind each individual creature. However, whenever I go to markets and show my art in person, people always see stories in them that they share with me. It's something that for me is wonderful about making art; I see what I make as seeds and fragments of stories but often other people expand on that and bring what they see into it.
