ARTIST'S STATEMENT

My materials, often referred to as "found," are above all ideas--ideas proposed, examined, and considered through evolving bodies of work rather than individual pieces intended as ends in themselves. I work in series, producing collections of closely related pieces that will open a dialogue rather than close an aesthetic gap for the viewer/wearer.

By making jewelry, I have tried to address key historical and contemporary issues pertaining to both art in general and jewelry in particular. In some cases, I do this by examining the difference between the authentic and the synthetic and between copying and appropriation. Questions surrounding the language of materials are not new, but they are also not resolved, and as such, they remain provocative. Equally vexing are the troublesome conventions of representation and abstraction and the use of scale as a measure of value in contemporary art, a problem for jewelers that I sometimes refer to by using rulers.