🖊️ How did your journey as a designer begin, and what led you to pursue a career in creative design?

I'm one of those artist people who started creating since the time they could hold a pencil. I used to make art more than anything else as a kid. I had a little wooden art table in my kitchen where I grew up in the Bluegrass, Kentucky, that my mom set up for me. I would make art there all the time, mostly with crayons and markers and paper.

My mom is really amazing. She did so many engaging crafts and projects with us as kids and honestly we had kind of a creative home school because she was so excited and such a good teacher. So after that, I really had art in my blood from the beginning. I lost sight of it for a while after high school.

It wasn't until years later, after Naval ROTC for two years at Tulane University and graduating with a degree in Environmental Studies — about seven years after my high school art career, that I found art again. I started working at Sotheby's auction house in New York City as an intern, they call them floaters — a paid intern that fits into each department as they need. I was a special events intern and then a customer service representative who basically womaned all the galleries and front of house spaces.

I got a really extensive firsthand look into the high end gallery scene and the business side of art and I really loved that. But at the same time, I felt extremely empty in my artistic and emotional life and career in general. And so, I started creating art again, as soon as I got a little bit of emotional space from my full-time job. And that was it.

I remember making this one simple chalk painting in my tiny apartment on 83rd and 2nd Avenue, a fifth floor walk up, that I shared with my friend Will (this was around 2015). It was a mandola piece. I remember it so vividly because it was the first time I'd created art in years. I’d had this very successful peak in high school because we had such a great creative education as kids—both at home and early on at Montessori. My high school really didn't focus on the arts, which made it actually easier to find a niche and excel as one of the only really great artists at the school.

I gained some notoriety for my work in high school, but after that, I disappeared from art. When I created my first piece after that hiatus, I realized I had to become a full-time creative. This sparked a journey spanning seven or eight years—through a six-month UX Design intensive at UT Austin, Master’s coursework at ACM in Aix-en-Provence, France, and the creation of several of my own art brands.

🖊️ What’s one unexpected twist or turning point in your career that shaped who you are as a designer today?

The most interesting point of my career has been living in several different countries. This has cracked open my design world as thoroughly as it could. I lived in the south of France and south of Italy for nearly four years as of this recording (March 2025). The feeling and cultural-visual story of a different place, especially those places which are so rich in heritage and have such a unique, visceral feeling to their architecture, art, landscapes, et cetera. — that showed me the myriad of different ways in which to design that don't always align with the place where you come from, but which align with who you are. The overlap in one’s roots and one’s discovery as a unique person —that’s where the magic happens in design.

It pushed me to continue looking for design choices that I’m drawn to on an emotional level, instead of just design that’s trending. In general, I find a lot of inspiration in books and book covers from places like southern Italy and southern France. Book design was one of the first real graphic design genres, and these forms of art show me how this tradition of graphic design is so entrenched in the culture of a place and its people.

As a designer, I have the unique opportunity to blend my own culture with those I’ve been drawn to, creating a beautiful mélange of artistic traditions.