I take an active role in my community regarding the things that are important to me. Art and culture. Who we are, where we have been and most importantly, where we are going. Artists are the antennae of the race. By fortune or by curse, we are called to express that which whispers.
I love jewelry. I am fascinated by the persona, and how this art form mediates the space where people present themselves to the world. I am currently specializing in wire, rough hewn semi-precious stones, pearls, tumbled glass, and other beads. My signature technique is to cut or break glass or shell, and then tumble it to create unique necklaces and earrings. I also utilize beads from pre-existing pieces to create a new piece, usually on a commission basis. I get a particular charge out of taking underappreciated or ordinary materials and transforming them into funky, casually elegant adornment. But when it really comes down to it, I am entranced over and over again to create a bauble out of any little thing that captures my or someone else’s attention.
I got started in jewelry design and crafting over a decade ago. I had always enjoyed wearing unique jewelry, and actually creating it myself gave me the opportunity to flex my creative muscle to make my own one-of-a-kind pieces. A shop in my town at that time was very helpful in giving me information on techniques. It also helped to inspire my imagination with information about beads from around the world, their history, and current bead designers. Since that store has closed I have continued to experiment, evolve my techniques and style.
I have lived in the City of Benton Harbor for sixteen years. I have served as President and board member of the New Territory Arts Association of Benton Harbor.I have served as President and board member of the Berrien Artist Guild. I helped to create the Benton Harbor Children's Art Fair as one of the initial board members. I have been a member of the Harbinger Garden Club and the Council for World Class Communities. I have instructed jewelry classes at the Salvation Army Care Center, the Box Factory for the Arts and the South Bend Regional Museum of Art. I am active in the local LGBT community, especially with the Gay Float build for the past two years.
Please view my work on my MySpace jewelry gallery at A Baubles Gallery - www.myspace.com/abaublejewelrygallery
You Are 83% Non Conformist
You're incredibly strange. And a weirdness like yours takes skill to cultivate!
No one really understands you. And you're cool with that. You just hope you never have to understand them! Are You a Nonconformist?
What Color Is Your Aura? Your Result: Blue Â
You are quiet, cool, and calm. You love your solitude and have no trouble standing alone. Blues are sensitive, truthful, spiritual, and intuitive--they often show signs of clairvoyance and ESP. They are the professors, detectives, and spiritual mediums of the world.
Pink Â
Violet Â
Orange Â
Red Â
Brown Â
Yellow Â
Green Â
What Color Is Your Aura?
Quiz Created on GoToQuiz
DO GOOD ANYWAY
People are unreasonable, illogical, and self-centered.
Love them anyway.
If you do good, people may accuse you of selfish motives.
Do good anyway.
If you are successful, you may win false friends and true enemies.
Succeed anyway.
The good you do today may be forgotten tomorrow.
Do good anyway.
Honesty and transparency make you vulnerable.
Be honest and transparent anyway.
What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight.
Build anyway.
People who really want help may attack you if you help them.
Help them anyway.
Give the world the best you have and you may get hurt.
Give the world your best anyway.~ Mother Teresa
Morality, like art means drawing a line someplace. ~ Oscar Wilde
Art does not reproduce the visible; rather, it makes visible. ~ Paul Klee
Take care of the luxuries and the necessities will take care of themselves. ~ Dorothy Parker
Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep. ~ Scott Adams
Develop interest in life as you see it; in people, things, literature, music - the world is so rich, simply throbbing with rich treasures, beautiful souls and interesting people. Forget yourself. ~ Henry Miller
We can lie in the language of dress or try to tell the truth; but unless we are naked and bald, it is impossible to be silent. ~ Alison Lurie
It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious. ~ Oscar Wilde
I listen, I forget. I see, I remember. I do, therefore I understand. ~ Ancient Chinese Proverb
Great art can communicate before it is understood. ~ T.S. Eliot
One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star. ~ Nietzsche
Reality I can handle in small doses, but as a lifestyle, I find it a bit too confining. ~ Tony Prentiss
The absence of flaw in beauty is itself a flaw. ~ Havelock Ellis
Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind. ~ Dr. Seuss
The pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple. ~ Oscar Wilde
If we do not find anything pleasant, at least we shall find something new. ~ Voltaire
Religion and art spring from the same root and are close kin. Economics and art are strangers. ~ Willa Cather
If you must fight, pick only worthy adversaries. ~ C. W. Barron
Your work is to discover your world and then with all your heart give yourself to it. ~ Buddha
Take into account that great love and great achievements involve great risk. ~ the Dalai Lama
I see the world in very fluid, contradictory, emerging terms, and with that kind of circuitry I just don't feel the need to say what is going to happen or will not. ~ Jerry Brown
Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it. ~ George Benard Shaw
Do what you feel in your heart to be right - for you'll be criticized anyway. ~ Eleanor Roosevelt
In order to be irreplaceable you must be different. ~ Coco Chanel
Let the beauty we love be what we do. ~ Rumi
Art is not a mirror held up to reality, but a hammer with which to shape it. ~ Bertolt Brecht
We see things not as they are, but as we are. ~ Anais Nin
I have loved the stars too fondly to ever be fearful of the night. ~ Sarah Williams
Diplomacy is the art of letting someone have your way. ~ Topo Gigio
My witness is the empty sky. ~ Jack Kerouac
Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd . ~ Voltaire
If sex doesn't scare the cat, you're not doing it right. ~ Anonymous
Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself. ~ George Bernard Shaw
Experience is a hard teacher because she gives the test first, the lesson afterward. ~ Vernon Law
What is laid down, ordered, factual is never enough to embrace the whole truth: life always spills over the rim of every cup. ~ Boris Pasternak
True friendship can afford true knowledge. It does not depend on darkness and ignorance. ~ Henry David Thoreau
There are no new ideas. There are only new ways of making them felt. ~ Audre Lorde
Mistakes are the portals of discovery. ~ James Joyce
We do not grow absolutely, chronologically. We grow sometimes in one dimension, and not in another; unevenly . . . We are mature in one realm, childish in another. ~ Anais Nin
I would rather go to hell by choice than to stumble into heaven by following the crowd. - Dr. Benjamin Mays
In the absence of clearly-defined goals, we become strangely loyal to performing daily trivia until ultimately we become enslaved by it. ~ Robert Heinlein
I passionately hate the idea of being with it, I think an artist has always to be out of step with his time. ~ Orson Welles