I’ve been drawing since I was five years old, and creativity has always been at the centre of my life. In high school, I excelled in the arts and was honoured with the school art award, which set the foundation for how I’ve approached every creative pursuit since.

That passion carried into my professional career, where I work with 3D and immersive technologies. The skills I developed in observation, detail, and visual storytelling gave me a strong base, but I always felt drawn back to working with my hands. While living in Sydney, I explored comic book illustration with brush and ink. It was rewarding, though difficult to build an income from.

When I moved to Rockhampton in regional Australia, the lockdowns gave me time to explore new skills. I taught myself calligraphy, and through my creative pursuits led me toward engraving with hand push and hammer and chisel. 

It became the perfect meeting point of everything I love: drawing, and the tactile satisfaction of craft. My journey has been self-taught and supported by my day-to-day work, but I’ve come to see that these old crafts are far from redundant, they still carry immense value today.

Connecting with the local lapidary club has expanded my practice even further. I’m learning silversmithing, cabochon cutting, and faceting gemstones, while also making many of my own tools to support the journey. Over time, my skills in bookbinding, woodworking, and toolmaking have all flowed together, and engraving feels like the natural connection of that path.

I’ve spent years practising engraving and building up my skills, and this is my first step into doing it for others. Along the way, I’ve acquired tools through second-hand finds, sales, and sometimes paying a “beach tax” to import them from abroad. In other cases, I’ve made my own tools to keep progressing. I’m now confident in both my tools and my skills to deliver quality work.

Your support will help me take the next step: investing in a pneumatic setup (most likely a GRS GraverMax). This upgrade will allow me to tackle larger and more complex projects.

Looking ahead, my goals are both personal and community-focused:

• Personal craft goals continue expanding my techniques and accessing specialised engraving resources and hardware to keep pushing the boundaries of what I can create.
• Community goals share knowledge, support others in their engraving journey, and contribute to keeping traditional skills alive.
• Creative vision create “forever objects” that hold meaning and story, lasting well beyond trends or fashions.
  

In the future, I’d love to attend in-person classes to refine my craft further and build stronger connections within the engraving community, and potentially offer training to help others begin their own engraving journey. If demand, funding, and space align, I would also like to pursue the relevant licences required to engrave firearms in Australia.