Dai was born in Ridgefield, Connecticut and has spent the last 12 years living in Mancos, Colorado and making the desert mountain Southwest their home.

 

Dai started drawing before they could walk and spent many days as a child melting colored wax on rocks and otherwise creating beauty with found objects.  Starting at the age of 7, Dai would take 3 hour art classes every Saturday and would often be found curiously staring at ants while peers were gossiping on the playground (have you ever REALLY looked at how all the parts of an ant's body connect?).  As an adolescent and young adult Dai continued creating art and learning from professors at the School of Visual Arts in NYC, at UNSW in Sydney, Australia, and at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, MA. Dai found that the medium didn't matter, they just loved to create. They have worked with everything from ceramics to watercolor, charcoal, acrylic, oil, metal, wax, photography, pencil, printmaking, and anything else they could find.

 

Simultaneously to creating art, Dai fostered their love of teaching and guiding.  They have spent the last decade+ leading adolescents and young adults as a wilderness guide.  Here they learned how to work with everything from pine needles, yucca fibers, juniper wood, to serpentine rocks.   From there, Dai started teaching primitive skills such as basket weaving, sandal making, and spoon carving at gatherings such as Wintercount and Rabbitstick.

 

In 2018, Dai became a graduate of the Wilderness Awareness School where they fostered a deeper connection to the world at large, which they so often aim to honor through their art.  It has become a central tenant to their guiding and artistry to create and teach in a way that honors the world and the wild ones.  It was from here that the Practice of Honoring became central in their life.  They also became more skilled at staring at ants.

 

As a child, Dai remembers having an art teacher tell them, "I'm not teaching you how to draw, I'm teaching you how to see." They have carried this lesson with them through the decades, aiming to see the world more clearly, more wholly, and with more gratitude. When they teach others, Dai aims to help their students see both the world and themselves as truly beautiful, and in that, worthy of the time it takes to truly pause and honor the gifts given to us by this world.

 

Thank you for reading. May you allow yourself to see and honor beauty today.