Beaded Buffalo

For a long while, I’ve wanted to merge beads with snake skin, but couldn’t find suitable reptile hide. The samples I came across were too brittle to withstand the flexing that occurs with bags. Recently I found a source of diamondback rattlesnake skin that’s both soft (for a snake, that is) and extremely durable, so [...]

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One day while sitting on a hill in South Dakota’s Wind Cave National Park, watching a herd of bison graze down below, I wondered if there was anything stronger than a buffalo’s heart. To withstand the brutal, unforgiving high plains winters and the near-extinction of its kind, the critter’s heart must be laced with iron [...]

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My grandfather was a snake man. He possessed a deep love and fascination for all things that slithered, and would without hesitation bend over and pick up any snake he came across. Once, he kept a boa constrictor in his house to hold down the mouse population down, and at a company picnic, he chased after [...]

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Inspiration comes from unsuspecting places. This design, for instance, was inspired by a Navajo rug I saw in Flagstaff, Arizona, just after hiking into and out of the Grand Canyon.
It was the most physically and mentally demanding challenge I’ve ever faced. The steep, thin, crumbling trail clung precariously to the sheer canyon walls (to avoid crowds, we [...]

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The bag has a furry buffalo back, a partially beaded strap and measures 8″ x 11″.
 After I finished the bag, I wondered if the design had other applications, so a smaller version wound up on the skull. It’s permanently fastened and won’t fall off.

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I once spent a September week in Badlands National Park, S.D., pulling up fence posts in the Sage Creek Wilderness Area so the land would be free of human traces. It was backbreaking but joyously rewarding work because I was healing once-wild land.
At one day’s end, as I stared out over the miles and [...]

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With so much urban light pollution, it’s hard to find places where you can see the night sky in all its dark, inky glory. One night I found myself on my back deep in North Dakota’s Theodore Roosevelt National Park, dumb-founded and slack-jawed at the spectacle overhead. In 40-odd years of life on this planet, [...]

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I visit the Black Hills of South Dakota whenever possible because I find the gently rolling terrain ideal for getting lost, then found. It’s also one of the most soothing, peaceful landscapes on which I’ve pitched a tent. I returned home from one trip with this design in my head. The bag is 6.5″ x [...]

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At first, the notion of combining buffalo and beads with something high-tech like a computer didn’t set too well. But then I reminded myself that laptops are an ever-present part of everyday life, so you might as well carry it in something that harkens back to a simpler time when prairie travelers worried about snake [...]

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One day, the wanderlust had a tight grip on me and I was reflecting on trips I’ve taken to Wind Cave National Park in South Dakota. It occurred to me that I’ve never been there in autumn, and I wondered what it looks like when the colors take hold of the trees and the buffalo [...]

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