Meditative Adornments
Contemporary Jewelry
REMARKS
This collection evolves from my instinct to gather. It harkens back to humanity’s hunter gatherer roots and enables me to connect with personal, natural landscapes. Gathering imbues the work with a sense of place, and affects my experience of and response to it. I am drawn to the relationship between water flow and land, through time, and the stones this interaction creates. Over the time I spend gathering at natural, undeveloped riverbanks along the Hudson, I have developed an attachment to the stones and places that is an essential catalyst to my creative process.
CORE
The rocks collected on the shores of the Hudson River (First called the Mahicantuck by the Mahican and Lenape-Munsee indigenous tribe of the region, meaning ‘The great waters in constant motion’ or ‘The river that flows two ways’) in both Beacon and Kingston are part of a rock formation called the Austin Glen Formation. This formation is made up of alternating layers of sedimentary rocks called shale and greywacke. Shale is made up of fine grained particles of clay, whereas greywacke is a general term for a dark gray sandstone made up of much larger particles of sand.
INFLUENCES
I have had the good fortune and honor to apprentice with and work for two esteemed and renowned contemporary art jewelers, Pat Flynn and Gabriella Kiss.
Learning from Pat Flynn laid the groundwork in handmade fine art jewelry. His combination of traditional blacksmithing materials and techniques with highly technical goldsmithing, diamond setting and exquisite mechanisms, were formative. His styles, at once complimentary and contradictory, showcase his respect for history of craftsmanship while embracing modern design and concept.
