(water sloshing) (footsteps tapping) - From an aesthetic standpoint, I have a very strong focus on everything being handmade.

I really try to stay away from things being very perfect, symmetrical, digitized.

I want things to look handmade.

(brush rustling) (pensive music) (sandpaper rustling) I just like it to have that worn in, lived in element.

I think it adds character.

In different illustrations I've done, I've actually poured coffee on the sheet itself prior to just to give it a weathered and aged look.

I've always really loved oddities.

Found items, weird objects, I've always loved antiquing, thrifting, everything and so if I see something that catches my eye, I want to do something with it.

I've always been very fixated on that.

I try to reuse materials, try to upcycle.

I try to avoid buying new and working with new materials, and that's how you get all the weird stuff that I make.

(bright music) (bright music continues) (collar clinking) All right, Minxie, come here.

I was raised in a pretty conservative household.

I was always very much myself.

While I was encouraged to be creative, it wasn't, I don't think as creative as maybe my parents or family thought it was, and so I felt that I was really kind of restricted from a young age with mediums or topics.

And so I think a lot of that was repressed and came out later on.

I think it really encouraged me to go outside of the norm.

(bright music) I do everything from painting, illustration, sculpture work.

When you have a two dimensional sheet, I always am trying to like pull as much as I can out of it.

I like things to have dimension.

(gloves rustling) Currently, the bulk of my work is a lot of tattoo work.

(plastic rustling) There was no plan of that.

I had never even thought twice about it.

People continuously made comments to me about the style of my work and questioning if I was drawing a tattoo or designing something.

And it just became so excessive to the point that I actually started looking into it.

I eventually got into an apprenticeship.

(tool buzzing) (container clattering) With work and everything that I do, I am very busy and spread pretty thin.

But I do try to dedicate probably about four to five hours a week between the Humane Society and then Bucky's Bull Rescue which is a sanctuary up in Sheboygan.

It's just something that's really important to me and it gets me out of my own bubble, out of my work bubble, out of that self focus.

(water sloshing) And you need that time away to be able to, I think, be creative and it also gets me out and gets me physical, mucking stalls or feeding cows.

It allows me to see the natural world in a way that's very different from what I typically do.

That allows me to get new ideas, set downtime for the mind.

One of the main ways that I try to expand as an artist, I try to put myself outside of my comfort zone.

The world, our reality, a lot of times it can be pretty grim and depressing and so I think there's a need for everybody to escape.

Not all of it has to have some significant underlying meaning all the time, right?

Sometimes it's just an amassed version of my essence or up to this point that I kind of like.

I want people to kind of question things or wonder about what it is they're looking at.

I don't want it to necessarily be very direct.

I want it to be very chaotic and whimsical and magical.

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