We were lucky to catch up with Jon Aguilar recently and have shared our conversation below.

Jon, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Did you always know you wanted to pursue a creative or artistic career? When did you first know?

Here’s a brief summary:

Since I was a little boy, I’ve always been an artist in my inner imaginative world, but my parents did not cultivate this part of me nor put any attention towards that due to their extreme religious beliefs and practices. At the age of 13 I decided I wanted to go into the military for a career, specifically into the special forces. I followed that track for 6 years, but left when I was 28 years old leaving that dream unfulfilled. I got married at 30 years old and not knowing what to do I decided to get my Bachelors with a loose plan to obtain a graduate degree and then enter the diplomatic or foreign service field. While I was finishing up my undergraduate degree I started a small landscape design-build business to support my family (a wife, 2 step kids and our 2 new baby boys) because I was always interested in designing and building outdoor spaces.

I turned down an opportunity to go to graduate school for a variety of reasons and I felt very lost. I had no idea what to do. So, with no other options in front of me I accepted a landscape foreman position in Seattle. That paid so little that I launched my own small design-build company a few months later. In 2008, I attended a drystone workshop in Seattle where we built a 40′ drystone bridge under the guidance of 2 stone masons from Ireland and Canada. I was 39 years old at the time.

About halfway through the workshop I had this sudden awareness that I somehow “knew” how to build using the “drystone” method. It felt very much like a “calling”. I just decided to go for it and it became my obsession. Ever since that day I’ve felt like the artist deep down inside of me has been clawing and fighting its way out from under the layers of all kinds of “stuff”.

Now, this year, and after my recent divorce, I’m feeling a powerful urge to fully emerge from the proverbial “closet”. So, I’m planning to launch a new website in 2026 that is going to fully display the “artist” part of me. It’s going to be called The JTA Studio and the tagline will be “An Artist Who Builds”.

Jon, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I’m 56 years old and I started in this craft unusually late, at the age of 39. I thought I wanted a military and foreign service career. Geopolitics, conflict, terrorism, etc. were always of interest to me or so I thought. What I’ve discovered in the last 17 years is that I’m most fascinated with designing and building experiences mostly in the form of outdoor spaces and features that result in creating beauty, wonder and awe.

My introduction to this stonebuilding method came about when I decided to sign up for as many trainings and workshops I could find in the Seattle area back in 2008. I had completed this Strenghtfinders test and one of my “strengths” was my love for learning. So, I guess you could make a direct connection between that book and my present work as a Stonebuilder.

One of my building principles is “Design drives behavior”. It’s not original to me. I love designing experiences – using stone as the primary material – that are immersive and feed the human need for beauty, wonder, awe, connection and calm.

I’m also very outspoken about the power of collaboration between craftspersons to create incredible outcomes for clients that exceed the ability of just one person. I’m also known for my significant disdain for fakery like faux stone, veneer stone or any cheap material that is heralded in the building industry as “efficient” and “cost effective”. These products are frauds and soulless materials. Efficiency and cost-effective are mostly false metrics that sound good but not when it comes to the spaces and structures we live in.

I’m currently re-branding with a separate website that will launch in 2026 that will be called The JTA Studio. My tagline will be “An Artist Who Builds”. The aim of this website is to show what’s in my imagination and what’s possible in our world. So, it’s kind of a bold move for me.

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

Goals or missions driving my creative journey:

– I have a desperate need to create. It’s like an insatiable inner compulsion

– I do believe it’s how God designed me and when I’m designing and building I feel very present, alive and in flow state

– I’ve had an insane number of experiences in my own life of being in the presence of true beauty and powerful moments of the emotions of wonder and awe. Humans are severely lacking beauty, wonder and awe. My major impulse right now is to design and build with these 3 aspects in everything I do.

– We are in a major transition phase as humans – mass chaos, uncertainty, demoralization and confusion – and I’m here to create for the reasons I stated above.

– For nearly 35 years I didn’t know what was true about me (I’m an artist, creative) due to how I was raised. So, in a way, I feel like I’m behind and trying to catch up in way or make up for all the “lost time”

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

In 2011, while I was still fairly inexperienced in this craft, I received a contract in Woodinville, Washington to build a large circular outdoor fire pit and surrounding stone bench. I bid out the project using a quartzitic sandstone because I liked the colors, but I did not know how hard that particular stone is on the Mohs Scale of Hardness. It’s way up there, in the 7 range.

I planned a tight joinery style which involved shaping every stone with a concave and/or convex aspect on the faces using a grinder and then tooling out the kerf cuts and bush-hammering the faces. Due to my inexperience I was way off on my pricing. I mean way off. Plus, it was taking me much, much longer than I planned, but I was dead-set on building this to the best of my ability. When I saw where I was heading in terms of price and time I brought this issue up to homeowner but that conversation resulted in a very heated argument and he refused to budge on the pricing. I didn’t know what to do. So, I decided to complete it anyway.

Mentally, it was super challenging because I worked everyday for about 2 months (no weekends off) and after I did some calculations, I figured out that I was making about $7 an hour. One major and positive outcome, however, came out of this project. It gave me the confidence and awareness that I could execute circular, geometric projects and that I had the grit and determination to give my best to each and every stone and not compromise.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.jontaguilar.com
• Instagram: jontaguilar
• Youtube: Jon T Aguilar

Image Credits

Bonni Pacheco / bonniappetit LLC
Aidan Aguilar