My earliest memories of jewelry making are from my childhood, somewhere around the age of 4. I was attending a summer outdoor sidewalk series at the local museum. Behind the museum was the school where they taught different classes, the one that caught my eye was a silversmithing class. My dad held me up so that I could peer into the window. It was dusk and the lights in the classroom illuminated the shiny silver the students were working with. I was hooked. We didn’t have much while I was growing up, so jewelry making classes were out of the question. There wasn’t YouTube or any other form of Internet learning in the 1970’s. Somehow, I figured out how to make jewelry from the scrap aluminum and copper wire that my dad had in his workshop. Life took me in a different direction as I finished high school and I focused on my analytical side getting a B.S. in computer science. I worked as a software engineer full time for 30 years.

I never lost the desire to flex my artistic side. I dabbled in all kinds of art, watercolor painting, oil painting, acrylic painting, knitting, crocheting, photography, graphic design, website design and finally more jewelry making. After I lost my husband to suicide in 2018, I took time to reset and reevaluate what I wanted to do with my life. Years of verbal and physical abuse had finally taken their toll on me mentally and physically. I needed to figure out what I could do and somehow metalsmithing was the magical turning point.