I was born in Spokane, WA and I grew up in Pennsylvania and upstate New York. I studied music composition, bassoon performance, and computer music at Brown University, and I moved to San Francisco in 1994 where I now live in the Tenderloin district.
In the early 90s, I made electronic music. First it was industrial music, with the band US Steel. Then as Grace, I performed techno and house music “live” at raves, and worked as a DJ in Providence, RI co-hosting a house music night called Feel at Club Babyhead. In the mid to late 90s, I ran the Getcenter recording studio in a garage in the Mission district of San Francisco, where I recorded musicians including the Rapture, Marcus Shelby, and the Calculators, and I played in a heavy blues band called Mos Eisley with my brother Gabe.
In 2007, I stopped playing music to pursue fine art photography. I studied photography for three years at the San Francisco Studio School. I participated in a number of exhibitions and published two handmade photobooks that combined inkjet prints with hand-set letterpress type.
After becoming disillusioned with the dominance of conceptual art in the world of fine art photography, and the prevailing lack of interest and understanding of photography as a visual art, I returned to playing music in 2014. In 2019 I released an album with my partner Jenny Kwon, as Beil and Kwon.
In 2021, photography drew me back in. My challenge this time around is to put in the work creating images that I find satisfying without worrying about the accomplishments, and balancing my creative energy with my music so that I can continue both of these pursuits.