Today I live in Volga, SD but I grew up in Tripp, SD and attended college at NSU in Aberdeen with general studies, and working in construction as an electrician in the summer. I always said, “ How do you know what you want to do for the rest of your life when we haven’t done anything yet?” I transferred to SDSU in 2002 for Electrical Engineering and during college I was fascinated by how things w
ork. I enjoyed Math, Science, Physics, and Chemistry. I studied at SDSU until 2005 but never finished and went to work as an electrician and took on the challenge of building my own house. I like building my own house and decided to build a spec house. During this time, I was introduced to decorative concrete in 2006 by my brother when he saw concrete countertops in Vegas at the world of concrete show. We then made our first countertops for few friends and also for the spec house I was working on. I stayed working in construction for 7 more years doing a concrete project here and there. In March of 2013, my brother had a friend that opened his own brewery and needed a cool bar top, so my brother and I got together to make the Wooden Legs bar top. Their story amazed me how couple average Joes could wake up one day and decide to make their own brewery. Back at my brothers garage, the morning of the pour, as I was filling up my coffee, at that point, I decided that this is what I want to do for the rest of my life, and felt compelled to do more. I started reading, studying, experimenting, and figuring out how to make the most amazing concrete possible. Now here I am a little over a year later, still trying to learn as much as I can to aid in my survival of living the dream, pushing as many boundaries as I can find, and hoping you think my work is amazing. There are many influences in my work, like Buddy Rhodes, Fu Tung Cheng, Bob Harris, Jeff Girard, and Mickey Harris. Each of them having their own unique style and as for me, I am most influence by my clients. I tell them I’m just the artisan and they are the artists. What look they are going for is up to them and I just try to put it all together for them. I love to build things and what I love the most about building concrete is, it challenges me to use all my knowledge of every subject I studied in school.
