Jay and Sherry Phillips grew up in the St. Louis area, were high school sweethearts who lived across the street from each other and now live in Chesterfield, MO, a suburb of St. Louis. Their medium is primarily wood. Jay owns his own IT consulting firm and has been a woodworker for over 30 years, building furniture, remodeling their home and turning wood on the lathe. Sherry is a retired hospital social worker who has been turning wood on the lathe for over 15 years. They have taken workshops, private lessons, and network with other wood workers in order to evolve their style and work by experimenting with different creative methods to make their pieces artistically unique. One example of unique wooden pieces is their technique of segmenting wood to then create artistic pieces which they laser art onto. They mix and mold a lot of the resin blanks that they turn on the lathe. A distinctive pen design of theirs uses authentic vintage postage stamps (purchased from a local stamp collector) that they wrap on the pen tube. They then clear caste mold over the stamps to create the blanks that they turn on the lathe for the pen body. Jay and Sherry use exotic imported woods from around the world as well as local repurposed woods from Missouri. They are motivated by their appreciation of and respect for nature. The beauty of wood and how each piece is unique provides their incentive to create pieces that enhance that unique beauty within their finished pieces. They particularly enjoy upcycling local Missouri wood and are proud to create with it rather than have it discarded as worthless.