- How would you describe your style?
I tend to bounce around various styles that challenge me artistically. My natural style is rather cartoonish but I like to delve into realism, abstraction and folk styles all the while balancing against the absurdist nature of designing fezzes.
- What do you feel makes your work unique and truly your own?
My work is an unique combination of my training in Fashion Design, my love of millinery, my background in the graphic arts, and my interest in embroidery design. All of this came out of my desire to find a creative outlet to freely explore embroidery design without needing to deal with the restrictions and expectations of the fashion industry. What started as a hobby shared with friends has grown into a full-time career where the business as a whole is my creative expression.
- What sort of things inspire you? Where do you look for inspiration?
I look for inspiration wherever I can, but I find that most of my passion comes from classic literature, mythology, science and fringe cultures.
- What is your creative process like?
Typically my work will start with random little sketches in my well-worn sketchbook, almost stream of consciousness stuff. I'm usually looking for some idea that will trigger a change reaction of creativity. From a partial rough sketch I will then go to the computer and work up a rough vector pass on a full design with the structure of the embroidery in mind. From there it goes into the embroidery design software where I will work out the final design with all of its stitches. I tend to have a style and color of the hat in mind while working up the thread version. Then it is a series of thread tests and design tweaks before finally creating the finished prototype. If all goes well, the design heads into production.
- Any special item you'll be releasing or sale you'll be doing at the fair that we should tell people about?
We will be revisiting a design I did many years ago and producing a special edition run of our Jackalope Fez for the fair.
- Where can we learn more about you?
