I was born in Rochester, New York, grew up in Sarasota, Florida, went to college in Oberlin, Ohio, lived in New York City for 15 years, and, finally moved home to the Smoky Mountains in Tennessee.

Until three weeks before I graduated from college I was sure that I was going to work in theater as a set designer, when I suddenly realized that nobody in theater makes enough money to live on. So instead, I got a job with the Children's Television Workshop as a video technician (i.e. lackey) and worked there for eight years. During this time I also worked in off-Broadway theater, designing, directing or producing a number of shows that you have never heard of.

In 1989 I started taking glassblowing classes at the New York Experimental Glass Workshop (now UrbanGlass in Brooklyn, NY). One day I had suddenly realized that I needed to know how to blow glass. Fortunately, I was in Greenwich Village at the time, so I went into the next store that sold handblown glass (2 doors down) and asked if they knew how I could learn. They sent me to NY Experimental, where I took classes and later got a job as a technician.

In 1991 I left CTW to become a substitute teacher in the South Bronx; a job at which I lasted for almost six months. Suddenly finding myself needing an income, I started showing my work to craft shops in New York, carrying pieces from door to door trying to persuade people to sell them. During this time I also worked at many other jobs to make enough money to keep from being evicted.

Gradually as I had more and more stores and galleries carrying my work I was able to devote mor e of my time to glassblowing. My work is now carried in over 150 fine craft stores and galleries throughout the country and I live (almost) entirely from glassblowing alone. In 1998 I moved to East Tennessee because it’s the best place in the world. I built a studio in the foothills of the Smokies in which I now do all my work, and which I share with a good many (uninvited) cats.

Glass is marvelous stuff to work with: liquid, it's brilliant and dripping, like glowing honey; solid, it's wonderfully hard and clear, like permanent ice. I can start with a pool of liquid, and, like magic, form solid crystalline objects out of it.

Each piece starts as a blob of molten glass--an opaque, orange-white 2000° gather at the end of a 5-foot metal pipe. The glass starts out at soft as caramel sauce, but as it cools, it grows firmer. When it becomes the consistency of putty I can shape it with metal tools. When the piece is finished, I put it into an annealer, a large oven which gradually cools it down to room temperature over a period of 36 hours.

My studio is in East Tennessee, at the foot of the Smoky Mountains. I don’t work alone, as there is always a crowd of neighborhood cats and dogs who hang out there.