My development as a jewelry artist began in childhood as I watched
my parents at work on their own handicraft projects.
My father, an avionics engineer by profession and an expert carpenter by avocation,
designed and built many pieces of furniture for our home.
My mother, a talented dress designer and seamstress who could whip up anything
from Halloween costumes to evening gowns, was also skilled at many other handicrafts.
Both were always at work on one creative project or another and many of my earliest
memories are of observing their work process, skills and tools with fascination and begging to try my hand at them.
They were willing teachers, so at a young age I learned to knit, embroider, design and sew clothing and help my
father in his basement carpentry shop. I also made my first forays into jewelry-making as a child, starting with
designing and weaving seed bead jewelry and later moving on to wire working.

My parents also taught me the enjoyment of the work process itself and the importance of attention to fine detail
and high quality workmanship. As a result, I had early experience of the satisfaction of mastering new skills, of the
excitement of the creative process and of the pleasure of beholding a creation of my own.
These experiences laid the foundation for my sense of myself as an artist and as an artisan with the drive and
confidence to tackle the mastery of new skills as they became relevant to my artistic self-expression.
Creativity in arts and crafts, including jewelry-making, has remained an avocation and passion since those days.
My training in jewelry-making has been an organic, eclectic process of formal and informal study and self-teaching
that continues to this day. I turned to the full-time pursuit of jewelry-making after retiring from an academic
career in 2004 and launched my own business in early 2006.