Personal Information:

My introduction to glass started more than 35 years ago.  Answering an ad in the newspaper for "someone to help with general work", it happened to be a glassblowing company.  Glassblowers from Germany who made scientific apparatus by hand.  I was fascinated! I started as any typical glassblowing apprentice in Germany. Plenty of cutting, grinding and cleaning glass.  In my second year, I was finally trusted with a bench torch in front of me.  From that point on, there was no turning back.  Hundreds of hours practicing by hand to firepolish glass, joining two pieces of glass with a flame, bending glass, shrinking glass and blowing glass. From Southern California to Northern California,  I furthered my career working for laser companies, a semiconductor company, a research and development company, and a scientific apparatus company.  

In 1992, I went out on my own and extended my glassblowing experience as an independent glassblower.  From 2000 to 2003 I attended  glassblowing classes at San Jose State University. All my formative glassblowing years had brought me to this pinnacle.  An opportunity to create, discover and venture outside the precision tolerances of scientific glassblowing.

It was fascinating to think of traveling a new road with glass. I have always loved to work with glass so now artistic glassblowing would be  my palette.  Opaque, transparent, dark, light, iridescent, reduced colors. Complicated application to make simple beauty.  A gather of molten glass on the end of a pipe to stretch, flatten, cut, flare, blow, or twist. An ancient art...........material from earth..........mixed with fire.......and your imagination, the ingredients for Glass Art.

Imagine being able to take liquid, hot glass and in the span of time, watch it turn from liquid to solid.  This is what I'm fortunate to do here in beautiful Northern Idaho, where it's easy to see vibrant colors all across the mountains.  Whether it's shades of Iris Light Blue or Lapis Blue skies with Opal White clouds in the sky or the color of Silver Cobalt Blue reflecting on Coeur d' Alene Lake.  So many different shades of green trees, Jade Green, Pale Emerald Green with splattered shades of Canary Yellow, Roma Red and Iris Enamel Brown in the autumn.  The color of Garnet red mixed with Night Blue in the far away summer sunsets, the blinding Alabaster white snow in the winter.  I may attempt in creating a glass piece to capture the swirls of a flower or fire, or a glass plate that has a rim like subtle, peaceful waves of an ocean or lake. Bottle stoppers of women that remind me of my nieces with long flowing hair. Each glass piece is created from a culmination of all my glass experience combined with the opportunity to see nature in all its spectrum of colors.