about

From the Artist

"I came to work with metals in midlife to keep myself busy through the end of a painful marriage. ⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣When my teen stepson died in 2015, I poured my grief into my fledgling metalwork. I forged a bracelet in his memory, etched with a handwritten message to him; in the months that followed, I was comforted by its presence, weight, and sense of permanence. From within this loss, I found my voice. 

Themes and aesthetics from my rural Ohio childhood are reflected in my jewelry work. I grew up on my grandparent's defunct farm, where I played in a dusty barn full of rusty machines and sheet-covered Victorian furniture. I waded in pastures that sighed with power lines and cornsilk. I explored my grandmother's farmhouse and bookcases piled with crumbling 19th-century poetry tomes. I foraged in a hidden room piled with blurry snapshots, mourning cards, tissue flowers, and inky letters from dead ancestors. Enchanted in this landscape of mysterious artifacts, I was content to draw and daydream among the tintype lives, abandoned bureaus, and lingering ghosts.

At university, I trained in the aesthetic of the Swiss School of graphic design. Though my body of metalwork does not always reflect the minimal style of my formal design training, its influence is ever-present in my jewelry work – from sensitivity to typography to attention to negative space.

My lifelong affinity for poetry and its power to express emotion also significant influence on my metalwork. I etch original verse, micro poems, and story fragments into my jewelry pieces, creating scintillating textures that, upon closer inspection, reveal a deeper meaning."