“It’s just a ride.”
— Bill Hicks
My father was a hell of a carpenter in his spare time. He taught me a reverence for craftsmanship, and to sink every ounce of my give-a-damn into everything I do - or you might as well not even bother. Every day, I use a dresser he built 70 years ago. The bottom of the middle drawer is just starting to get a little wobbly, but I keep it that way to remind me that he was also human. That’s the energy I put into each piece of wearable art that I create. An attention to detail and quality craftsmanship goes into each piece, while the design evokes a shared human link.
My path to becoming a lapidarist, silversmith, and leatherworker has wound through several careers: morning radio co-host, author, comedy show producer, and certified dog trainer. Somewhere between the radio show and training dogs full time, I started learning about different rocks. I wanted to wear them, so I started teaching myself how to set them in wire to make necklaces. As my new obsession grew, I got access to a friend’s art studio who had some lapidary equipment in the back - rock saws, grinders, polishing belts - everything I needed to shape stones for mounting in jewelry. When I couldn’t get access to that studio exactly when I wanted it for as long as I damn well pleased, I had some big decisions to make. “Are you just here to play, or are you gonna go all in?”
“If it was easy, everybody’d be doing it.”
— Ron White
(my brother)
I was born and raised in Texas; I’d spent the last 20 years in the same tiny house, and had become devastatingly unenthusiastic in my comfort zone. I needed a new adventure. When I saw an opportunity to reinvent myself again, I snatched it and moved to Little Rock, Arkansas. I found a house suitable for me, my momma, and three geriatric dogs that also had an old toolshed out back I could convert into the shop of my minimally-budgeted dreams…The Little Rock Shop.
After finishing The Little Rock Shop with walls, insulation, hanging doors, and other items most traditional buildings require to earn the name, I set up my new lapidary equipment and added silversmithing to my resume. It was something I'd been wanting to learn since high school and fueled my affinity for setting things on fire. Things were finally starting to lean in the right direction.
Leatherworking has also fascinated me since I was a child. I took tooling classes when I was young, and I’ve built on that knowledge as an adult by learning about when and why to bevel the edges, why you can burnish one piece but not the next, hole punches vs. chisel punches, and the list just keeps going. Taken together, I’ve now amassed the skillset to not only set beautiful stones into handmade silver settings, but also then set that onto leather accessories.
So going “all in” is exactly what I’m gonna keep doing and see where the adventure takes me. I’m here to keep learning, experimenting, and building lovingly crafted treasures that you can’t find anywhere else, and hope it brings people a little joy on the journey.