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A Life Carved by Fire
I’ve been burning wood for over twenty-five years, long before I had a name for it, a business for it, or a studio to call my own. Fire became my teacher in my twenties, a way to turn everything I’d survived into something steady, something beautiful, something that stayed.
I grew up without much softness. Foster care, survival, grit, those came first. Art came second… and it saved me more times than I can count. When I immigrated to the U.S. at eighteen, I didn’t know the language, the culture, or how I was going to build a life with a baby on my hip. But I knew how to create. I knew how to tell stories with my hands.
That’s what Smoky Wood Studios is:
a living archive of resilience, rootedness, and nature.
Born From the Forest & the Fire
My art begins where I spend most of my life, in the woods and on the trail.
The Blue Ridge Mountains have shaped the way I burn. Their textures, their quiet, the way light hits the ridgeline at dawn… all of it shows up in my work. I burn cedar, maple, and basswood, just as some people keep journals, each piece documenting a moment, a memory, a feeling.
Every line has intention.
Every burn mark has depth.
Every piece carries a story.
This isn’t factory-made “rustic décor.”
This is art grounded in lived experience.
Handmade. Slow-Made. Soul-Made.
I create small-batch pieces, wall art, pendants, earrings, comfort objects, and seasonal collections, all drawn and burned by hand, one at a time, with the same quiet devotion I’ve had since the beginning.
I believe in work that feels like something.
Work you can hold.
Work that brings you back to yourself.
Work that connects you to nature, to story, to stillness.
If you’re here, you probably feel that pull too.
My Philosophy: Art for Real Life
I don’t create to impress an algorithm.
I create because art is my anchor, my way of remembering who I am, what matters, and what I refuse to lose to the world’s noise.
My pieces are meant to be lived with, not just hung on the wall and forgotten. They’re meant for hands, for gifting, for carrying, for grounding.
Fire taught me this: beauty comes from pressure, heat, and patience, just like life.
