I’m Austin, the creator of The Dalley Way and a multifaceted creator with an extensive resume including photography, social media managing, travel and creative writing, studio art, graphic and text design, interior design, gallery curation, archival work, and historical research. How did I end up with such a variety of skillsets and interests? It’s a bit of a story.

How I ended up living the life I do really isn’t a surprise if you look into my past. I remember being a kid in the warm afternoons of southern California, always pretending to be somewhere else. To be on a ship sailing sapphire waters, moving through the branches of thick forests, climbing into caves and ruined temples. I’d spend hours flipping through the pages of my National Geographic atlas, running my fingers over the hundreds of maps as if touching them would somehow bring me closer, I would gaze at sculptures and architecture in history books from the library.

But unlike with many people, age never extinguished my fires; as a teenager I spent hours on the internet reading about everywhere, everything, about language, cuisine, culture, and art. Amongst all the AP classes I had in my high school, Art History was where I shined and excelled, as in it I was able to do what I love the most; talk about art, culture, and history. From this point I would go on to receive my bachelors degree in the History of Art and History from the University of California Santa Barbara, with a special interest in Ancient Greece (an area of history that has long been my most persistent passion) though fully versed in the Western art historical canon.

It was while in university that some of my most artistic aspects emerged, as I trained to work in museums and galleries, doing exhibit curation, press releases for shows, as well as igniting my own artistic production such as film photography and drawing. Yet while this was incredibly fulfilling in my artistic brain, I still had a sense somewhere deep down I knew I wanted to live a life that was more visceral and for it to not be temporary; for it to be my whole life, my existence, to constantly live and explore. This led me after my bachelors degree to move to New York City, where I began a deeper interest in photography and writing that would in turn push me to chase my dreams abroad.

Since then, I’ve lived and worked in seven countries, the longest of which has been Italy, where I lived for thee years and received my masters degree in the History, Art, and Archaeology of the Ancient Mediterranean from the Universita di Pavia in the region of Lombardia. And while I do yearn in the future to eventually gain my PhD and work in academia, I’m not completely closed to the other paths the world may offer from any of the forms of work and art I create. What will happen next I suppose we can only wait and see.