Are there any cultural or historical influences that often show up in your craft sculpture work?

When I sit down to carve, I often feel the weight of centuries pressing gently against my hands. You ask if cultural or historical influences show up in my craft sculpture work—the answer is a resounding yes, though they rarely arrive as direct copies of the past. Instead, they whisper through the curves, the textures, the stories I choose to tell.

For me, the most persistent influence is the rich tapestry of mythology. Growing up, I was captivated by the Greek and Norse legends—tales of gods and giants, of transformation and hubris. You can see it in sculptures like my “Echo of the Titans,” where the rough, unpolished stone reflects the raw power of ancient beings, or in the delicate, winged forms that hint at Hermes’ agility. These myths aren’t just stories; they’re archetypes that resonate across cultures, and I try to honor that by leaving a sense of timelessness in my pieces.

Historically, I’m drawn to the asymmetrical elegance of Japanese woodcarving from the Edo period, where restraint and negative space speak louder than ornamentation. In my recent series “Silent Gardens,” you’ll notice how I emulate that philosophy—letting the material itself guide the final form, much like the Zen-inspired rock gardens I studied during a trip to Kyoto. Similarly, the bold, narrative reliefs of ancient Mayan stelae have taught me to embed layers of meaning within a single surface, where every groove tells a part of a larger story.

But it’s not all about distant cultures. My own heritage—a mix of Celtic patterns from my grandmother’s tales and the industrial might of my home city’s steel mills—seeps in too. In a piece called “The Weaver’s Braid,” I intertwined intricate knots (a nod to Celtic art) with sharp, geometric lines (a reflection of factory machinery), creating a dialogue between past and present.

So yes, you might find traces of Rome in a fold of marble, or a hint of Qing dynasty porcelain in a smooth, glazed finish. But my goal isn’t to replicate history—it’s to let these influences breathe new life into my work, so that when someone touches one of my sculptures, they feel a connection to something older, wiser, and endlessly human.