Hey, I’m River and I’m happy you are here. I live and create in the beautiful Black Hills of western South Dakota on Oglala Sioux ancestral land. My wife and I live a slow, simple life here with our two rescue pups...and that’s exactly how we like it. Spending time in the mountains I am surrounded by not only inspires my work, but it restores and recharges me. When I’m not tinkering away in the studio you can find me outside trail running, hiking, tenkara fly fishing, camping or just sitting by the water somewhere sipping a beer and enjoying the beauty around me.
I find myself entranced and inspired by so much in the world. Everything from writing and poetry, style, interior and home design, architecture, music and dance, photography, street art and graffiti culture to the simplest things in nature and the untamed beauty of mountain landscapes informs what I create and share here. In fact I truly believe that the way we live our lives can be an art all its own.
In my studio I primarily work with sterling silver and various stones to create pieces of wearable art that will stand the test of time, but you can also catch me dabbling in other areas to expand my craft such as bead work and millinery. I am not interested in mass producing the exact same piece over and over again, but rather in the one of a kind nature of handcrafting pieces slowly, one at a time. Silversmithing sort of found me when I was lost. It wasn’t something I had ever imagined myself doing before taking a weekend workshop in 2018. I was hooked, but since I didn’t have anyone to teach me I showed myself the ropes and I’ve been doing it ever since.