artist bio

I grew up in the shadow of the Cascade volcanoes and was raised on the dirtbag tradition of climbing mountains. When I was twelve my father gave me a set of Fred Beckey’s three volume Cascade Alpine Guides and the fifth edition of Mountaineering: Freedom on the Hills. I grew obsessed with climbing and by my late teens I was mountaineering on the glaciers of these volcanoes and rock climbing on the basalt walls of the Cascade range. I had a list of the highest mountains tacked above my bed. I read every book I could find about mountain climbing and followed the ascents of the elite climbers and imagined myself in their orbit. I tried out for the guiding service on Mount Rainier. And then in March of 1999, I ended up in Yosemite Valley. Like so many young, climbing vagabonds before me, I was hungry, eager, and without enough gas money to get home. I entered the Valley that first time in the dark and found a dusty place to sleep in Camp IV, the climbers camp. I unrolled my sleeping bag on the dirt, crawled in and fell asleep to the chatter of camp.

With morning came a chill of dry, spring air. Up through the ponderosa’s long needles, past the cawing ravens, the granite stretched beyond all imagination. I lay there and stared, and stared. I was in a cathedral, my cathedral. I knew then why people pray to gods unseen. I was lying beneath the abode of angels who reached down with stone fingers to bless my soul with something akin to creative enlightenment. I didn’t climb a thing that first time in the Sierra. Instead, I wandered in rapturous, poetic ecstasy, eager to drink it all in, to bathe myself in its glorious light, in the dusted pine and mountain air. I found trails, used and unused, high over the valley. I trudged through spring snow drifts and scrambled up granite slabs tucked away deep in the recesses of Tenaya Canyon and high along the backside of Half Dome. I fumbled at making images with an old Nikon camera. I needed to express this feeling through something more than physical effort.

My whole world shifted. It was then I ceased wanting to be on mountains, climbing, and sought to be in the mountains, making art. This desire led me to Brooks Institute of Photography in 2001, and on from there to the broad wilderness expanse of the West, where I have spent half my life photographing the landscape. Following in the footsteps of Muir and Thoreau. Experiencing what Kerouac was after, learning why Han Shan tucked himself away to scratch his poems on rocks and trees. Through it all, the Sierra Mountains have been my cornerstone. Landscape photography is the art form that has defined who I am and why I matter.