I am a painter first but I have been making jewelry for quite a long time now. My first foray into jewelrymaking happened in the early 1990's. After graduating from college, I had some truly wild oats to sow. I bought a backpack and travelled, without much of a plan, through southeast Asia, starting in Tahiti and working my way west. The countries I visited over the course of 3 years were in this order: Tahiti, New Zealand, Australia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, India, Nepal, Japan, Germany, Belgium, Holland and back to New York. The reason I mention all of this is because I bought a kilo of turquoise and quite a few other stones in Nepal and India, that became the seed of my new little jewelry venture when I returned to New York.

I had a day job tracking the news on tv and radio, but at night and on the weekends I was either painting or making jewelry. I made pendants using the stones from India and eventually expanded the collection here with natural tumbled stones imported mostly from Brazil. These stones were set in a fast drying clay and decorated with silver wire. It was a great little start up business and a solid supplementary income selling in craft fairs around the tri-state area.

Then, 3 years later, I picked up and left again, this time to a town called San Miguel de Allende in Mexico, a special place. I made a life there for more than a few years. I was able to paint and make jewelry as a full time endeavor while living in an idyllic and inexpensive place amongst people from a wide range of backgrounds and countries. I was in paradise. In 1997, I started working in the silvermaking studio of Billy King. He is brilliant and somewhat crazy on the surface although not really, when you get to know him. More to the point, he is a great teacher of metalsmithing the old fashioned way. I worked in his studio for 7 years until I opened a gallery in town. At that point I moved my studio to my house and my studio work became wholly focused on making prototypes of new designs. At the same time I started working with 2 local jewelers to produce my designs. The names of these two very talented jewelers are Manuel Aguilar and Jesus Mendoza. They are local artisans whose work is central to my jewelry line, even now that I am living in New York.

All of the elements of my jewelry are made by hand and are solid, not hollow, which means they have substantial weight to them. This also applies to all of the link jewelry. The links are solid wire, regardless of the metal. The wire is hand rolled to form links, the chains are hand assembled and each link is individually soldered closed.

I love running Modernista Jewelry, a small venture that represents the natural development of my love of good design, the beauty of stones and the insurpassable pleasure of working with my hands in the act of honing my chosen craft.