Anytime I can perform outdoors and in any kind of nature is my favorite way to perform.

I like to throw things really hard.

I can throw things higher than most of the ceilings in the theater, so having like infinite space here always just feels a lot more liberating and juggling as an art form and as a technique is kind of an endless well of possibilities.

So you just get to the point where you're like, I can do this forever.

And it's like music.

There's an infinity of things you can do there, and I like to just wander around them and that infinity and pluck little things that I like and, and I can curate those in a way that people like them really happy.

So I was going to school in Iowa City at the University of Iowa, and I had that moment “come the juggling ” moment where I just started getting really into juggling.

And while I was in school, I went to study abroad in India and I just wanted to go somewhere that was completely different That summer.

Exactly Perfect timing.

The European Juggling Convention was in Germany, was serendipitous.

I went to the European Juggling Convention.

It was my first time outside of the US, and from there I saw people in Germany that were street performers and it was like, Wow, I guess you can make money in just juggling and street performing and growing up in Iowa, no one tells you that or you don't see that.

That really changed everything for me.

I've done like performing at museums, performing at dance festivals, Street performing festival and Dubai, the Great Bombay Circus in India.

The 400th Jumboo Safari event in Mysore, India, went back to the U.S., went to Oregon, moved out, and I flew to Paris and was just like, I guess I just live in Europe now.

It's kind of the idea of a circuit was kind of always the goal.

Like, okay, I do Edinburgh every August, then I could have a little time to explore Brussels, and then maybe if that wasn't going that well, I knew I could do well in Milan and Italy, and it was a pretty wild life.

So I did that for about four years.

Although Iowa has always been home to me and my parents live here, so I always come back through every year.

Both of our kids are very excellent at what they do, juggling and flute playing.

And he told us when he grew up he wanted to work at McDonald's and ride a horse to get there.

That was that was what he wanted then.

So thank goodness that didn't happen.

So I'm originally from outside of Donaldson, Iowa, in Montrose on the Mississippi, and my family's always been extremely supportive of me.

I've been really lucky to have that.

I think a lot of people don't when they're telling their parents they're going to go into the arts in any way, but especially when they tell their parents are going to be a juggler or some kind of unusual circus performer.

It doesn't always go that well.

he juggles, unlike anybody else.

He puts a lot of effort into it.

He's had modern dance, and so he does really interest in things that other people don't do.

Well, when he was in scouts is when one started to balance that balance and kind of led to juggling and that sort of thing.

And I think really it was when I was in college that I got into more performing.

And I think.

Juggling was the main thing in the beginning for sure.

But I started to just be like, What if I learn every circus discipline that I possibly can?

So I started just it's like, okay, I'm going to try to do handstands.

I'm going to get a tight wire apparatus, I'm going to unicycle if I really do torches.

The sword swallowing.

I was not happy about.

He had a little circus in Iowa City called Cirque du Stupendo And his friend did sword swallowing and other odd unsafe things.

So then when he was in India the second time, unbeknownst to us, his friend gave him the sword to take with him.

And Luther taught himself to swallow swords while he was over there.

And we didn't know until they sent an email on the subject was great news.

And then in the message said For me, anyhow.

When I first started juggling, there was a part of it.

Almost immediately I was like, I'm going to try to do a world record some time.

So I was going for six balls while swallowing Sword, and you have to do a minimum of 5 seconds.

And I got just below that.

So I pivoted to do five balls and beat the time on the current record.

The current record was 5 balls which I go to all this while in a sword, and I got that.

Technically, I tied the record and so I have the record for most things.

juggling while sword swallowing, but it's shared with Space Cowboy another swords swallower I could not watch that it people were going, I wouldn't look.

But he doesn't swallow swords anymore.

I have two so far as I know.

So I've had a history of always coming back probably at least once a year just to see my parents and family.

But the time I came back for the longest as an adult, most recently was during the pandemic.

My fiancee Alexa and I were living in New York, and the pandemic hit in a couple of months and we loaded everything into a U-Haul and drove it across the country to my parents farm, originally for six months.

And then it was like, Well, it's still the pandemic, So another six months and then turned into almost two years after being at my parents, we found a place in Iowa City, and I ended up for about a year and three months.

I worked at the post office as a letter carrier, and in that time I got a grant from the Iowa Arts Council to make a make a new show the idea of distillations for me was trying to kind of work with dimensionality and juggling and finding ways to make things that are big, be small at the same time, and things that are small be big at the same time.

Yeah, so that's the banjo here in Creston, Iowa.

And what I'm really into is the projection goes onto the back and it kind of curves across the space.

And I sent a photo of this last night to my friend Mark, who did the video also, and he was like, Hey, it's like you're performing inside of a juggling ball.

And I was like, Yeah, that's exactly what I'm what I'm going for.

So I feel like the show is kind of about me going inside of a juggling ball so it feels perfect.

I always feel just insanely lucky that I have a thing that I love so much to do because something that I've realized is like, not everybody has that and it's given me a lot.

And then I have this thing I can share with almost everybody that I can use now to try to bring a little more of like a deeper message and a concept behind the shows that I'm making instead of just the wow factor.