I have always acknowledged Alexander Calder as the greatest inspiration to my work.  However, others have had an impact as well: Henri Matisse, Isamu Noguchi, and Joan Miro, to name a few.  I now understand that these artists and their achievements are the link I have to my own inner world, that they are the voices that tell me I exist in the company of like minds.  They give me the visual confirmation that my interior world is not only valid and important, but that all of us, great and small, are struggling with the same conflicts.  We are overcome with spiritual joys when we discover new ways of containing and organizing the swirling energies, the beauties and the terrors inherent in the condition of being human.

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My mother was a concert musician, and my father a painter and scholar, so my first exposure to art was through their interests: the Renaissance and early Medieval art.  Then, at age 14, I was in the local library and discovered a book on Calder: his mobiles and his jewelry.  My life was transformed.  His work opened my eyes and my heart to a universe I had no idea existed.  At once I began to create jewelry inspired by his work, and it marked the first time I realized I could communicate structure and excitement through my hands.

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By the time I was 30 years old, I had begun a career in the then new Sculptural Jewelry field in New York City.  My training consisted of a single course in silversmithing and working into the late evening with hardware store wire and a pair of pliers.  Over the years, my real training has been learning to listen to my intuition, allowing my mind to open up to its inner secrets, and working many, many hours at my craft.

 

In my work, the effect of the whole is often a blending of conflicting images: soft surfaces and hard-edges, large forms and delicate details, and a general tension that is the result of subtle movement in different directions.  When I am designing a new piece, I imagine the forms flying in space.  It is only towards the end of the piece, as I am joining one form to another, that the fine lines appear and enhance the forms and overall shape of the piece and give it that final delicacy.

 

To me, this is my representation of poetry, the incongruous elements blending together to form an overall image with complex layers.  In some ways, I feel that I am drawn to beauty, but that beauty is not simple or conventional.  It incorporates my own understanding of truth.  So, the result I am trying to achieve is a true beauty, on my own terms.

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I find a sense of joy all around me: in nature, in people and their relationships to themselves and each other, and in all that man has created to express himself and that part of him which cannot be expressed.  As I grow and evolve I am full of wonder at what my hands seem to do on their own, as if I were channeling something I cannot express in any other way.  I am eternally grateful for that.