We belong to the people who make living feel like art

Four decades of life experience (and a healthy amount of winging it) have taught me this:

Not only the majesty of the mountains and the way the locals took care of their own, but how Jackson pulled everything into perspective. Like I had truly belonged to something, someone, for the first time. 

The hold the American West had on me is something I couldn't name at first. But when I accepted a full-ride scholarship to the University of Arkansas to pursue a Masters of Fine Arts in Photography - and then met my husband six weeks before leaving - I finally understood it.

In a decision that felt equally audacious and cosmic, I canceled everything and stayed.

That's when I started trusting what was unfolding, right here, under the Tetons. 

Choosing this adventure wholeheartedly, I leaned into what my soul knew. Taking photos. I invested in new gear and said yes to every opportunity that came my way. Eventually building up a portfolio and photography business that could only be mine. An accomplishment that I am still so incredibly humbled by and grateful for.

Over the last decade or so, I've had many different focuses in my photography. What's become increasingly important is that my work means something. That I leave something behind for my clients to cherish. I've always been in love with documentary & editorial photography, but wasn't sure how to embrace it within my career. 

Until motherhood. 

Until two little girls with bruised knees and golden locks not only cracked my world open, but became the artistic directors of it. 

Frankie & Goldie lifted my eyes to the art of living & seeing magic, again, again.

To: the choreography of morning coffee, the symphony of a backyard snowman, the silliness of sisterhood, the romantic gesture of the long way home (that my oldest likes to call the shortcut), and all of the reverence tucked into the folds of the ordinary days we're alive in.

They reminded me that the most sacred moments are rarely the loudest ones. They're found in the relationships that reach for us, the chaos that consumes us, and the traditions that gather us.

That's the heartbeat behind every photograph I create now.

Not perfection. Not performance. Not a carefully curated version of your life.

But the texture of it.

The togetherness of it.

The indescribable feeling of being with this version. 

Because photographs are proof that you paid attention, too. That you loved and were loved. That this beautiful, fleeting, ordinary life happened.

And that, to me, is art.

I fell recklessly in love
                   with Wyoming.