It was probably inevitable that I would eventually make Lopez Island, “The Rock”, my home. When I was a kid, my sister, Britta, was the first family member to visit the island. I don’t remember what she brought other family members as gifts from her summer here, but she brought me a bag of beach rocks. Rocks that were unlike any I could find around our Minnesota home. Round, colorful stones, shaped by the magic of wind powered waves on the rocky beaches of Lopez. That was the beginning of my love for rocks and the stories they tell.

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When I finally made my own way here, I collected rocks just for their own unretouched beauty. But in the hours I have spent on beaches around this island, the rocks started whispering to me. At first, I would just drill a hole to turn a stone into a simple necklace. But the whispers became more insistent. The rocks could be miniature canvases. Using diamond coated bits, I could turn each rock into something just a little different, a frame for smaller pebble beads, a colorful cairn to mark the way back to nature, and eventually, tiny stone faces, and other carved fancies.

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With an infinite variety of rocks to act as my muse, I feel my craft has grown over the years. I still make my old friends, the basic designs I first developed, and which remain strong talismans of the natural beauty of the Pacific Northwest, but I also love digging deeper into especially interesting rocks to find what is hiding inside, while staying true to the shape nature endowed upon it.

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Besides the farmers market, you can find my work at Chimera Gallery in Lopez Village, between Blue Heron Bistro and Lopez Grind coffee shop.