wireadorned

Someone once claimed that they had led several extraordinary lives. So, too, have I.

Although born and raised in San Diego, California, and still reside there, much of my life has been spent in other equally wonderful places. As a young Navy wife, Hawaii, Japan, Korea, the Philippines, Hong Kong and Singapore were visited at one time or another for over a decade. My visits varied from weeks to months over this period of time.

The cultural and artistic influences of those exotic locales remain with me today. Later travels to the Caribbean, mainland Mexico including the Yucatan Peninsula and three decades worth of beach house life in Baja, California, added a little more to the spiciness of my creative urges.

And who could forget the images of the Mediterranean, or deny the power of the folk arts and crafts of Turkey and Greece? Add in some Italian, Swedish, and Norwegian ancestry, fold in extensive travel throughout the U.S., living for a time on the East Coast, a dash of passion for African tribal art, a soft spot for tropical living, an absolute obsession for Japanese culture and art, toss in a pinch of anything that adds class, shake well and bake on high for about a lifetime, and voilà, a recipe for my sense of artistic values just magically appears.

Along the way of this life path, I’ve tried to express my art through oil painting, drawing with pastels, throwing pots, seed beading, quilting, interior design, launching a line of Caribbean-inspired designer clothing and jewelry, studying Chinese brush painting and calligraphy, and the Japanese arts of Ikebana, floral design; Sumi-e, ink painting; Hari-e, the Japanese art of paper tearing and Gyotaku, the Japanese art of fish printing.

One day the need to have a string of pearls restrung brought me to a revelation: it can be very expensive to restring pearls! Gaining the knowledge to do that task for myself led me from one class to another. Over the past six years, my passion for adorning wire has multiplied into adorning and designing with sheet metal, precious and semi-precious metal clays, various methods of casting with molten metal, weaving with Fine (99.9%) Silver, stone setting and lapidary where I cut my own stones. My most recent passions are working with enamel and foldforming metal. I always seem to have some type of experiment brewing in my home studio.