Over 35 complex and labor-intensive processes go into handmade footwear. I build leather Western boots by hand using traditional tools, taking over 100 hours to complete each pair. My work reflects meticulous technique, material awareness, and my creative drive to produce unique designs steeped in tradition.

Handmade Footwear straddles the worlds of art, craft, design, and apparel without any discipline claiming this extraordinarily complex set of processes. I research the globally significant footwear history of Massachusetts and relationships to our contemporary living traditions in my process-driven practice. To keep this knowledge alive, I educate different publics on footwear craft.

Fundamentally I think through making, using this iconic American craft to articulate my experiences as an authentic practice that seeks to answer the questions life presents. Leaving a deliberate footprint is my philosophical and literal goal.

My work is more than the handmade footwear and art pieces I produce, it is an active resistance to the systems in place that would have with-held technical skills due to my gender – or fed me bits of it to profit off my underpaid labor. I am a bootmaker because the making techniques specific to footwear construction are my means of communicating experience