"My name is Michelle and I have been making things for as long as I can remember."
My favorite thing about kindergarten was cutting paper and pulling glue off my fingertips. In elementary school, I painted watercolors of the desert landscapes I had hiked with my parents and built miniature paper towns out of scotch tape and paper clips to pass Saturday mornings with Dad at the office. Adolescence was filled with hours of doodling, pottery, sculpture, tubes of acrylic paint, and blacks & white photography with my 1975 Cannon.
Later into my 20’s, I met James. His passion for woodworking and a dedication to developing his craft melded perfectly with my own. We were inspired to blend our families into one.
Sometime in 2010, one of my children asked me if I knew what the Fibonacci sequence was. At that moment, my fascination with Sacred Geometry was born. Instantly the compass, ruler, and a set of Micron pens became my close companions. Sketching Sacred Geometry developed into my primary artistic expression.
In a strange and random twist of fate, a dear aging friend of ours ran down our mailbox one day and we required a fix. At first, we thought to create something artistic using ceramic tile over cinder blocks, but a friendly man at the DIY store suggested we try using glass. Neither of us had ever worked in glass, but the idea was instantly exciting. With trepidation (and a box of Band-Aids), we made our first glass cuts and unknowingly, our first steps towards what would eventually become Compass & Cutter.
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Our dear friend who inspired this journey has passed away, but the mailbox is still holding strong. It greets us each day as a memorial to our friend and a pleasant welcome home.
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James and I continue to inspire each other with the development of our craft and it brings us great joy to share our art with the world. James puts his art and soul into each and every frame while I get to study Sacred Geometry, sketch, cut paper, and break glass with wild abandon.
​And after all that wood and glass are glued down, I still LOVE peeling the glue from my fingertips.
Michelle