My studio is located in the town of Volcano, on the Big Island of Hawai`i found just outside of Hawai`i National Park. I try hard to create captivating, original sterling silver designs that speak both to me and to others about beauty, and the agelessness of the artistic endeavors of ancient man. I find myself often taking inspiration from nature, and from ancient drawings carved as Anasazi cave art, from excavated pottery shards and petroglyphs notched in volcanic stone found along the beautiful shores of pacific islands, oh, and fossils.
A minimalist at heart, when not working with ancient art I often work in abstractions in nature trying to find universal similarities in forms. I like to discover and intentionally create morphologic ambiguity in my work, open for interpretation. Part of my process before I begin designing jewelry is to research collections of works by ancient artists, visit archeological sites and learn about the cultures. I am just fascinated by petroglyphs. I do not merely want to capture the images with my tools; rather, with careful, colorful consideration, I want to give the ancient artist work, life once more. I try to breathe life into the antiquities of man’s early art, to discover and rediscover, their designs, ideas, innovations, and lifestyle. I strive to capture these qualities, and allowing for modern artistic interpretation, sculpt them into the medium of silver, of my time. Hopefully my artwork speaks to this and brings forward the voice of their past.
As artists, we often think about legacies, probably just as these ancient petroglyph carvers and pottery makers did in there time here. I like to think about the legacy of painting on a cave wall, or carving and image in rock, and then I think about the durability of my silver metal works. My hope, is that one day, in our long distant future some artist might dig up my work at some archeology site or see my work in a museum and feel the same way.
