About Me

Putting the Super in Superficial since 2016

I hand fabricate all of the jewelry you see here in my shop. I choose the slow method of making by hand because it makes me happy. I love the sensuality of working directly with silver and gold; the way I can feel intimately the degree of pressure I’m putting on a stone I’m setting, or the way it feels when a curl of metal peels away as I carve a graver into it. When I’m soldering I watch for that one brief moment when the metal is hot but not too hot and I'm completely present in the moment.

When I was eighteen I wrote in my diary that my life’s goal was to create a poetic body of work. I knew I wanted to be an artist but I wasn’t sure yet which medium would be my focus. Over the following decade I would carve stone sculptures, paint miniatures on silk, and photograph New York at night before discovering the one thing worthy of all my attention: jewelry making. In art school I’d been discouraged from making my sculptures small, and overtly pretty pieces were considered superficial. I’m happy that in working as a jeweler I can put the super in superficial and get rewarded for it.

In many respects, jewelry making is like gardening. You’re never finished, your work is constantly growing and changing, materials are reused and recycled, you’re trying to control something that can’t entirely be controlled, and beauty is the ultimate goal. I love tending my “garden” of gold and silver through the seasons.

Many of my pieces are a canvas for engraving. I’m interested in creating a new vocabulary for the engraved line, one that is improvisational, abstract, and expressive. I hope you love the sparkle inherent in a bright cut as much as I do; having my jewelry worn by people is the greatest reward.

I live in Portland, Oregon, with my daughter, two dogs, and one cat.