In the beginning...

My darling wife likes a challenge. That's probably why she married me (?). But that spirit of adventure is what makes her "game" for trying a number of different hobbies. Unfortunately, her attention span is quite short. So my house is full of countless unpainted pieces of wood from her tole painting days. We have drawers of unused scrapbooking supplies, old camera lenses, and even sports equipment. But years ago, during Christmas vacation, she worked on a project that involved two separate pieces of painted wood that were wired together. That masterpiece eventually hung on our front door...and scraped the paint off of it...but that's a whole different story.

That day, she left a roll of wire and some needle-nose pliers on the table. I've always been a bit of a doodler, so I picked them both up and began shaping forms out of the wire. Over the span of a brief conversation, I had made a few simple designs that I used as Christmas tree ornaments. I made a candy cane, a wreath, and a very simple angel.

I was hooked.

I travel quite a bit for work, but I get motion sickness if I attempt to read on a plane. For some reason, bending wire doesn't have the same effect. So, I carry a roll of wire with me on my business trips, and I'm able to engage in something that both amuses me and allows me to occasionally bring a smile to a random stranger's face.

The simple shapes evolved into more complex designs, lettering, and a combination of the two. Almost everything I do is made out of a single piece of wire, and I actually enjoy the process of trying to figure out where to start and end some of the more complex pieces..like this piece I made for Kyra, a young gymnast: