BIO

My earliest creative memory is drawing elaborate cartoons in elementary school notebooks. Years later, before cooking became my profession, I experimented with spray paint, citrus, onions, and other produce, unknowingly foreshadowing the work I would eventually develop.

I never attended culinary school. Instead, I worked through increasingly demanding kitchens before joining the opening team at The NoMad in New York, which went on to earn three stars from The New York Times and a Michelin star.

I later launched my own concept at Smorgasburg and eventually opened three restaurants in Washington. Estelle was named one of Esquire’s 50 Best New Restaurants in America, while my concepts were featured by The New York Times, Travel + Leisure, Texas Monthly, and Seattle Met.

My art practice emerged while building Carnal in 2020. Faced with an over-budget restaurant and an empty dining room, I began working with what was around me: bones, charcoal, vegetable trim, blood, wine, shells, and other kitchen byproducts.

What began out of necessity became an independent practice centered on material, place, season, and transformation. The work has since been featured by The Seattle Times and Modern Huntsman, with one recent process film approaching one million views.

STATEMENT

My work begins where a meal usually ends.

Bones, shells, blood, spent charcoal, vegetable trim, wine, tea, spices, squid ink, seaweed, and other culinary materials become pigments, textures, and tools.

The process is driven by the same instincts that guide my cooking: balance, contrast, texture, order of operations, and an understanding of how materials behave.

Many pieces are made outdoors, where temperature, wind, humidity, rain, insects, and time influence the final result. I establish the conditions, but I do not control everything that happens.

Place is not depicted. It is embedded.

Each work becomes a record of a particular meal, landscape, season, and moment. Because those conditions cannot be recreated exactly, every piece is one of one.

MY WORK

The work aligns most closely with abstraction and is typically produced at larger scale, generally from 24 x 24 inches upward.

Each material brings its own texture, density, color, and behavior to the surface. I work with those inherent qualities, allowing the materials themselves to influence the composition.

Once complete, excess organic material is removed and the works are fully dried and sealed.

Some pigments remain stable while others shift subtly over time. That variability is part of the work.

ART FOR SALE

A selection of available works is shown here, with additional pieces available upon request.

Private viewings are available by appointment.

I also consider commissions for residential, hospitality, cultural, and site-specific projects, including work created from materials connected directly to a property, restaurant, landscape, or place.

Collaborations can also extend into food and art dinners, installations, and experiences where the meal and the artwork are conceived as part of the same process.