Went blind. Kept going.

This isn't a comeback story. I'm still in it. Here's how I got from a job site to a drawing table with ten pencils strapped to my fingers.

Scroll. The day goes down as you read.

PHOTO: Jesse, head and shoulders, porch light at dusk, looking straight at the lensRight eye catching the last of the sun. No smile required. Shoot from his right side so the working eye is nearest the camera.

Three beats

The dust

Grew up in the wide-open part of Nevada. Wellington, Yerington, the valley and the hills around it. Thirty years self-employed in construction. Hands that could build anything, and did.

Framing in July. Concrete in January. You learn that most problems are just a thing in the wrong place.

The shift

About three years ago the body stopped letting me work construction. Then in 2025 the eyes went, fast. The left one is gone for good. The right one was saved by a surgeon who did what he could, a community that chipped in, and the Lions Club Eye Center.

I see the world through one eye now. It turns out that's enough.

The fuel

I googled "impossible" and M.C. Escher came up. I'd seen those shapes as a kid and knew how they could be built. So I built them.

Then I wanted to draw faster than one pencil allows, so I made copper rigs that hold two, then six, then ten. The limitation became the method.

Sober since 3-17-17

It's in my bio because it's the foundation everything else sits on.

Childhood trauma, then alcohol, then a date I stopped. The art started after that date, not before. None of this exists without that morning.

If you're in it right now: it gets strange, then it gets good.

You only keep what you have by giving it away.

The line I run the whole thing on. I'm an ordained Dudeist priest, if that explains anything.

What giving it away looks like

  • Drawings traded for stories.
  • Sculptures left on the playa at Burning Man.
  • Lives on TikTok where the point is the company, not the sale.

The merch on this site pays for pencils and copper. The rest stays free.