When the pandemic was in full swing in March, April, and May of 2020, the Baltimore Jewelry Center where I work began having weekly check-ins for people who studied and made jewelry there. We shared what we were working on and responded to weekly challenges. One of them was to create a still life with …

This is not really my favorite question. Do I count the time I spent looking at some designs or photographs that stuck with me and have  become some part of the inspiration for a piece? Do I count the time trying designs that didn’t work at all, but that left some legacy that helped me …

It’s a different kind of thinking, isn’t it?  All of us have experienced some kind of creation. Mostly, when we’re really into something, it’s so filling and so intense that we are not able to simultaneously back up and name what’s going on. I have tried, which is a little bit like lucid dreaming – …

This question has caused some struggle for me. I have always loved jewelry. But I am also awake to the needs and suffering around me, and making jewelry doesn’t seem like an obvious way of responding to them. What good is jewelry? Is it about vanity and ego? Just one more thing, another piece of …

I send half the money I make on sales to nonprofits doing great work. One frequent beneficiary is Prisoner Visitation and Support, a nationwide network of volunteers that visits prisoners in military and federal prisons. For over 50 years, the Bureau of Prisons and the Department of Defense have allowed these volunteers to visit people …

Most of us probably remember Emily Dickenson’s wonderful poem, which starts: I dwell in Possibility – A fairer House than Prose – More numerous of Windows – Superior – for Doors –      I love to stand in that place of “possibility,” with the windows and doors open, waiting to see where some creative journey …