2022 / Rachel Reist and I met at a mutual cousin’s wedding in the mountains of Montana in the summer of 2021. We had a pretty striking chemistry and kept a conversation going even when we left for home–her in Utah, me in Pennsylvania. She proposed commissioning me to make artwork based on one of her favorite Bible verses, Isaiah 61:3. I proposed a collaboration.
Isaiah 61:3 To appoint unto them that mourn in Zion, to give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness; that they might be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that he might be glorified.
I started the collaboration with a drawing of an imaginary flower. She burned the drawing and sent me the ashes. I used the ashes in my next two pieces which are on their way to Utah as we speak.
2019 / Andrea Gilkey and I have been penpals for at least 15 years. We’ve started making artwork together along the way.
2019 / Dabbling with some artists who left their slides in my classroom.
2019 / My niece, Penny, and my nephew, Oscar, are both talented artists and story-tellers. These are two things we worked on at the start of the pandemic.
2017 / My dear friend, Erin Harmon, had an idea for a children’s book that we’re working on. Whether we finish it or not, I’m happy with the initial ideas.
2015 / One of my close friends and one of the most thoughtful illustrators in the world is Scott Westgate. He and I went on a journey through the world of app design this year and it was wild. Making an app is much more work than I had imagined and I could never have done it without him. The People Watching Game is an app that allows the user to competitively people watch together.
2013 / OP stands for orange peacock and my orange peacock is Tessa Tintle. She and I are old friends at this point and we did this work together with retinal photographs.
2012 / I worked with Barbara Saltern for just a little while when I started teaching design and photography at Nazareth Area High School. She taught physics down the hall from me. Once I learned that she made intricate lace designs it seemed like we needed to collaborate and make some lace impressions in the darkroom.
2010 / Dan Talley: amazing artist and closest friend. He and I have done a million things together and among those things we’ve made some art installations! Not surprisingly, in this particular installation we explore the depths of human connection.
2010 / Jim Weiss and I did a bunch of collaborative work in the early 2000s. The wildest of our collaborations was scaffolded by creative storytelling; we performed the piece surrounded by a show of my work in early 2010.
2009 / We didn’t actually do anything with this collaboration other than talk about it and make some drawings, but Tien Nguyen and I spend a fair amount of time talking about music and this was a sketch for a music box that would allow for improvisational playing with unconventional instruments.
2009 / Dan Talley and I have always had a rich ongoing conversation about the intersection between life and art and spirit. This project was installed in an old Bethlehem Steel Building and dips its toe in that conversation.
2009 / Among my most artistic penpals were Elizabeth Perry and Sacha Joseph. I wanted to include them here because we made some fun pieces together in 2008-2010.
2006 / I met Nathaniel Cooper in elementary school, but we became quite close in an a very general type of art class in high school. Nathaniel is mostly blind, so I was very interested in his artistic experience. I ended up becoming interested enough to do a thesis project about him and other visually impaired artists when I was getting my MEd. This is the video he and I made together.