I am a Connecticut native, but I lived in California for 15 years through the 60's and early 70's. After I received my BA in Jewelry Making & Weaving in 1970 from California State University at Northridge, I pursued a MA in Educational Psychology while continuing to design and create Jewelry.
I returned to Connecticut in 1978 and worked in the field of counseling and teaching while pursuing my passion for jewelry making and slowly building my studio. After retiring from my private counseling practice in 1993, I have been working full time as a metalsmith. My studio and gallery are located where I live - in the home that has been in my family for 100 years. I now teach Jewelry Making in the Art Department at Southern Connecticut State University.
I have often been asked to describe my "style", but have found it nearly impossible to do so. I have called my work organic, primitive, contemporary; my work is not one of these, but all of them. My forms are organic, the designs contemporary and primitive at the same time. I am subtly influenced by Native American, Egyptian and pagan culture, signs and symbols. Many of my designs are inspired by nature.
Currently I work in Sterling Silver, with accents of Gold which are becoming increasingly more integral to my work. I never repeat a design. Each piece is the only creation of it's kind.
Often the stones dictate the design and tell me what the finished piece should be; sometimes the image explodes in my mind in a flash and it turns out exactly like the picture. At other times I just start working at my bench, putting different shapes and stones and colors together, building the piece as I go with combinations that surprise me.
I love to mix unexpected elements: coyote rib bone with sapphire; druzy agate, lapis and sea worm shell; turquoise and fossil whalebone; jasper and agate combined with faceted stones like sapphire, ruby, peridot and citrine, along with wood, leather, polished shells and other sea treasures. My husband is a lapidary and cuts many of the stones I use in my work.
Metal is often thought of as hard and cold. I want to show the potential of metal to be so much more than this. I love the way metal can be warm, flowing, soft, liquid: the way it can express as something organic and graceful, arising out of the earth. I love the color of metals and their wonderful reflective qualities.
I think of making Jewelry as creating Art as Ornament. The process of creating each piece becomes a spiritual journey through which I discover a little more of myself. At the end, each piece stands alone as a statement without words. I want the meaning for the viewer to be found in each individual's emotional response to my Art.
When at the end of my journey I stand back and really see the piece whole for the first time, I think, with surprise, "So THAT'S what that was about!!
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