I first began making aluminum can collages out of teaching desperation—asked to teach a metals/jewelry summer camp but with barely any materials or budget. Taking inspiration from hammered tin folk art and contemporary steel tin artists (Robert Villamanga and Harriete Estel Berman especially), I swapped vintage steel tins for easier-to-source aluminum cans.

For the first few years of this endeavor, my creations were mainly collaborations with students for school installations and respective demo pieces, but I began making personal work in this style in 2019. In case you were curious, teal and brown are the toughest colors for me to source, and my favorite can is any flavor of Wegman’s sparking water.