I was born and raised in Oakville, Ontario, Canada. I began my post-secondary studies at OCAD U, focusing on industrial design, but left the program to work for the Workshops on Fogo Island in Newfoundland, Canada. It was there that my interest in craft and furniture design truly blossomed. I later transferred to the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) to complete my undergraduate studies and focus on furniture design, as I recognized that learning how to fabricate using traditional methods was integral to my academic goals. By working with my hands, I understood I would gain a deeper insight into the theory behind production and craft.
Throughout my academic journey, I also maintained a peripheral interest in digital media studies and tech criticism. As my studies at RISD progressed, I began taking computer science classes at Brown University, aiming to explore similarities between the fields of craft and computation. This focus was primarily on understanding the histories of modern computation and craft (post-industrialization).
The connection between craft and computation is historically significant. The Jacquard loom is often cited as a precursor to modern computing, and the development of copper-printed computer chips was inspired by traditional printmaking techniques. Yet, despite these connections, computation is often treated as a separate field, detached from other areas with deeper traditions of human innovation.
In 2022, I was brought on as a researcher and writer at Interaccess in Toronto, Canada, for an exhibition on the pseudo-internet technology, Telidon. Similar to Minitel, Telidon was a Canadian version that transmitted information, navigable like websites, through telephone wires and displayed on a TV monitor. While working at Interaccess, I deepened my exploration of the histories of craft and computation. I observed how early technologies were invented, used, and tinkered with, which reinforced my belief that the way a technology looks and is explained greatly affects how it is understood within culture.
In New Dark Age, James Bridle critiques the misleading metaphors used in technology, such as the term “cloud,” which obscures the physical infrastructure of data storage. This abstraction reinforces a conceptual divide between makers and users, mystifying technology rather than making it accessible. Bridle argues that non-exploitative technologies require new metaphors—ones that accurately reflect their purpose and function.
I approach technology through the lens of craft, searching for new metaphors for technology and opposing the idea that tech is some intangible, untouchable force. Instead, I make objects that ground computation in the history of craft. Using wood and copper, I reclaim the materiality that tech often obscures. Through gleaning materials, plating textiles into circuit components, and using traditional woodworking methods, I expose the labor and physicality hidden beneath sleek, polished tech products. The word techne comes from the Latin for “arts and crafts,” and if the first technologies were, indeed, crafts, I celebrate the return to technology’s origins in the reinterpretation of home computing.
Mold’s Picks at New York Design Week, Mold Magazine, 2024.
27 Things We Loved at 2024’s New York Design Week, Sightunseen, 2024.
Pretty Secrets Exhibition Puts the Spotlight On Major New Talents, Sightunseen, 2023.
Apple Powered Computer, Mold Magazine, 2023.
Craftsmanship and Obsolescence, Peripheral Review, 2023.
How RISD Students Are Using A Centuries Old Beech Tree, Brown Daily Herald, 2023.