I grew up in a creative family surrounded by art and music. My great uncle Harry Thrasher was a sculptor under Augustus St. Gaudens and my father, Alden "Al" Thrasher, worked as a photo retoucher, illustrator, and watercolor painter in Oxford, MA and Keene, NH. He also founded a 100 voice choir and was very supportive of my other career as a bass player. I apprenticed with him and eventually bought the business and expanded the company to include fully digital graphic design services. I own and operate that business, Thrasher Graphics, to this day. 

For most of my adult life I've made a living through art, but it's only in the past decade that I've really allowed myself to make art for my own enjoyment. Lamps were my entry point, and then I began designing and assembling “found object” art from rusted metal, reclaimed wood, and photographs. In more recent years, I have been working more with acrylic paint, collage, and various reclaimed odds and ends. I make some furniture now and then, too.

Most of the photographs I use are scanned and enlarged from photos taken by my dairy farmer grandmother, Florence, on the Worcester Farm in Keene, NH. I like to combine the enlarged photos with rusted metal or reclaimed wood for added texture and contrast. Several of the photo Assemblages are of my mother, Harriet “Hatt” Thrasher, and were taken by Al in Boston in 1949. Creating new works out of these images from my family's past has been a fun way to connect with my history and to share their stories with a contemporary audience.

The theme of New England history appears throughout my work. For example, in many of my pieces you’ll find remnants of original billboards that were removed from Vermont highways in 1968. I was fortunate to have a friend who had saved a collection of them for decades in his family's barn. A lot of my materials are “foraged” in this way, and acquiring them can be as exciting as putting them together. At this point, I have quite a unique collection of metal signs, wood, machine parts, old toys, and more to work from. I’m always experimenting and working on new pieces in my basement shop, so check back often.