Hi, I’m Sam.

I’m a Montana based mixed-media artist and illustrator.

Growing up in Montana, I was always within a stones throw from a wild place. Outdoor places to me, have always been a place of complete freedom, inner connection and sacredness. I have learned many a life lesson and healed many a heartbreak in the silence of the forests and mountain tops that I was lucky enough to be raised in.

I’m an introvert by nature, seeking solace in quiet places when the world gets too loud. Even when I was young, when the pressure of being a kid who fit in, or my schoolwork I worried I was too stupid to understand left me in frustrated tears, I could always be found outside in the trees, trails or dirt piles throughout our neighborhood.

In the quiet the outside offered me, I found consistent freedom to create whatever world I wanted. I was always on a journey, scouring the local dirt piles for ancient dragon eggs, crawling through the barbed wire fence behind my house to sit in the long grass for hours watching the long abandoned fox den for movement, or spending days in various tree stands feeling every trunk for a heartbeat I was so sure was there.

In a world where I never understood my place, there has never been a safer place for me than forest floors, ridge lines and sacred quiet.

After getting degrees in both Anthropology and Native American Studies from the University of Montana, I still struggled to figure out who I was and where I fit in an incredibly loud world.

After working for several outdoor centers in both the oceans of the UK and the mountain ranges of Colorado, I found that the more time I spent in the surrounding wildness, the more myself I finally became.

After a particularly hard season in my life, I decided to start making whatever lit me up. Woodburning, screenprinting, painting, clay work, candle making. The more I made the more I felt whole, and the more I felt connected to that wildness I always found in the surrounding mountainscapes. I named my shop The Grizzled Moon, after the full moon in January. The name of that moon is actually the Old Man Moon or the Long Night Moon, but during that time in my life I felt exhausted and burned out to the point where the only thing in my life that was giving me energy was getting to the woods or creating art about the woods. I felt grizzled af, and thought that maybe if I created a shop where others could bring a little wildness I handmade for them into their homes, maybe the world would be a little less grizzled too.