I grew up and remained in Trumansburg with breif forays into Vermont and Virginia where I learned and plied my craft before relocating back to my childhood home and setting up shop.
While in Vermont I attended Goddard College where independence and resourcefulness are highly valued in the artistic community. It was there I discovered metalworking and some traditional techniques of blacksmithing and woodworking
with hand tools.
Beginning in 1999 I have worked as a traditional blacksmith, nearly disdaining modern welders and torches for the manual techniques and mechanical joinery of rivets, collars, and through tenons. Techniques which would be unfamiliar to a blacksmith 400 years ago are avoided in much of my work.
Recently I have expanded into using modern tools where they can augment traditional methods and allow me more artistic freedom. The process, however, remains the same. The design, planning, material selection, and fitting of a final piece, whether as an individual element of a large gate, or a one-piece cap lifter, is done from the point of view I have developed as an artisan.
Halloween at the RONGO!
A pensive moment at Goddard...
Sometimes we get along...
...and tear up the garden...
Sometimes we wrestle...
...and tear up the house...
Our Dogs
Sonata is a Red Heeler
Sequoia is a "fingerprint brindle whatchamutcallit"
We have a cat too, but Hobbthrust doesn't like to have his picture taken..for security reasons...
I don't look down at the rest of the world...this is just how my dogs see me...
That's it for now...later kids!!!
Amanda (in yellow) and the two "kids". Hamming it up for the camera...
