About Will

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I am an interdisciplinary maker and craftsperson originally from central Arkansas, where I grew up building things in my parents’ garage. Unlike many craftspeople, I never fell in love with a single media. I developed a love for diverse processes, systems of tools and materials, and the endless skills our hands are capable of when given the opportunity to learn. This set me off on a winding path through all manner of materials, learning environments, and career opportunities.

Today, I have a BA in studio sculpture from Hendrix College in Arkansas, an MFA in interdisciplinary product design and design research from SVA in New York, and have completed the Core Fellowship at Penland School of Craft in North Carolina. These education experiences have been intertwined with work in a number of industries including custom art installation, functional carpentry, and CNC sheet metal production. Having this diverse experience means that I am equipped to pursue my love of craft in any environment. It also means that I am equipped to share that love with others. I am driven to find ways for craft and “non-traditional” career opportunities to impact our concepts of community, cultural identity, and economic structures.

Click here for the latest copy of my résumé. 

On Heartspeak and My Continuous Socratic Exploration

Our ideas of what make us whole often include some concept of synchrony or harmony between what we feel, need, and want in our hearts and what our mind and body experience in the world around us. But, we often find ourselves out of sync, craving something that isn’t there, or incapable of pouring out how we really feel. My objects and I maintain an ongoing conversation between what we know to be true on the inside and how that manifests on the outside. By highlighting the negative spaces and subordinate surfaces that are out of sync with the whole, I observe these sensations of dualism and multiplicity in life.

Some surfaces are highlighted as loss or imprint, openings to be maintained or closed off. Others are given force and volume through a breath of air and the power to affect their more dominant form from inside-out. These inflations and voided objects are counterparts in observing the ways we react to internal change. Their materials, molecularly bonded or chemically altered, make up a true whole. Distilling the interaction to these raw materials and binary surfaces is akin to playing with light and shadow. What we see is not so much the material at war with itself, but its captured relationship to an outside force. These highlighted surfaces, much like our internal asynchrony with the world around us, are either given the power to affect their greater shape and be known or maintained and shielded from the world around like a wall casting shade on an otherwise vibrant scene.