First Principles

I didn’t grow up in a particularly artistic family or town, but when the bug bit in my adolescence, I chose to trade in my baseball cleats for ballet slippers.

Following an intense period of performing arts magnet schooling and earning a musical theatre degree in the Steel City, I made the move to NYC ( i.e. Bushwick) with $1,000 and no job. It was the dumbest and most rewarding thing I’ve done to date.

My adventures brought me through 6 years of song-and-dance-manning my way across the continent all while honing my skills in visual design, helping other artists find their place in the digital media landscape, a and even building a micro roasting company.

As my joy for creating commercial art weaned, and my injury count grew, I stumbled into Williamsburg Muay Thai in 2017. Fast forward to me in 2018 getting beat up by fighters in Bali that are now beating up other people in the UFC.

I will never compete in the UFC, but it was a life changing experience.

In 2020, my wife and I moved to Franklin, TN with our adopt-a-doodle, Bev. These days, I’m playing with a dedicated act in Nashville, reading a lot more books, attending Mass on Sundays again, and continuing to brew coffee in the most inefficient ways imaginable. My work aims to preserve a sense of reverence for things that modern life too easily treats as disposable: beauty, craftsmanship, tradition, and devotion.

- Jonathan