Born and raised in Phoenix, AZ. I started in the trades when I was eighteen. I’m forty-one now. Twenty-three years, same hands, every step of the way.

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I’ve worked every phase of construction from digging six-foot trenches for sewage lines to detailed finish carpentry. There’s no part of a build I haven’t done myself. Over these 23 years I’ve worked alongside full crews on every size project, and now I work alone, by choice.

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Build It Sexy started as a brand in 2017, but the practice behind it goes back to 2003. The name was a joke at first , a promise to do a beautiful job. Don’t worry, I’ll build it sexy for you. When clients started repeating it back to me, it stuck, because the work stands out. It can’t help but be sexy.

I do repairs, consultations, and I take a small handful of larger projects a year. It’s my hands doing the work on every one. No crew. No subs for the parts I don’t like. The same person who measures the room is the person who lays the last tile.

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“The whole difference between construction and creation is exactly this: that a thing constructed can only be loved after it is constructed; but a thing created is loved before it exists.” — Charles Dickens

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The work I do has always lived somewhere between construction and sculpture. I’m from Phoenix, but I wanted to go to school in the Bay Area. I moved there and took a job on a large immigrant construction crew in Berkeley, handed a shovel and told to dig. I was a gopher for a few months, until I wasn’t. I needed the work, and I’ve always dedicated myself fully to whatever’s in front of me. Then I found the Palace of Fine Arts in Golden Gate Park. I was is complete aw. I walked around for hours admiring it from every angle and inside. I imagined the people who designed and built it. I wanted to be part of that story. The builders story. I’ve never been to Europe, that site showed me what I could aspire to. I was still drawing and painting, but I knew I needed to learn to sculpt. Construction and sculpture started at the same time for me.

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I’m a working artist as well as a builder. I sculpt in glass, brass, copper, stone, and steel, and I’m developing a nature-themed show for early 2027. The same instincts that shape a sculpture shape a kitchen, how materials transition, how a joint looks from across the room, how light catches a finish or glass at four o’clock when you’re home, instead of noon.

 

Outside the studio, I’m a father of two daughters, a reader of philosophy and counter narrative history, and a student of craft in every form I can find it. I’m drawn to the golden ratio, to Roman architecture, to anything Taoist or Heraclitean about transformation. Most of what I build, in one way or another, is about that.

 

If you’re looking for a contractor, there are plenty in Phoenix. If you’re looking for someone who treats your project the way an artist treats a piece — that’s the kind of work I do.

 

— Jared McGonigle