Discovering myself through a journey…

For many years, I thought of myself primarily as an accountant, and what I didn't fully appreciate was that creativity had been quietly accompanying me throughout my entire life.

Long before I began working with glass, metal, flowers, and paint, I spent two intense years studying fashion design at the School of Fashion Design in Boston. Those years were filled with creativity, experimentation, and more sleepless nights than I can count. I learned to draft my own patterns, construct garments from scratch, and bring ideas into physical form. I participated in fashion shows and experienced the unique excitement of seeing something that began as an idea, sketch and become a finished piece.

Life eventually took me in a different direction. I built a career in accounting and financial analysis, work that I genuinely enjoy. Numbers, systems, and problem solving appeal to me just as much as color, texture, and design. Looking back now, I realize these interests are not opposites. Both require curiosity, patience, and a desire to create order out of complexity.

In 2020, during a particularly difficult period in my life, I found myself searching for something grounding and hopeful. Like many people during that time, I was spending more time at home and looking for ways to create beauty in uncertain circumstances.

At first, I worked with what I had available. I collected flowers, dried them, and arranged them into small compositions. Soon afterward I began painting and taught myself through books, experimentation, and countless hours of watching tutorials. Oils, watercolors, acrylics, alcohol inks, pastels became my dear friends… I wanted to learn them all.

Then glass entered my life.

I took a stained glass class taught by a local artist and immediately fell in love with the material. One day I found a broken glass flower that had once been part of a garden decoration. I paired it with a shell and created a small installation piece. What was smilingly a simple project sparked a question: How was this glass flower made and how can I make it myself?

The answer led me to flameworking.

I signed up for a short introductory class and became completely captivated. Wanting to learn more, I enrolled in what I thought would be a simple glass mushroom pendant workshop. Only after arriving did I discover that it was actually a hot-shop glassblowing class.

I still remember watching the first gather of molten glass emerge from the furnace. It felt almost magical... A glowing mass of liquid glass slowly transformed into a mushroom stem and then a cap through movement, gravity, heat, and timing. I was spellbound...

For the next several months, I immersed myself in glassblowing classes, creating flowers, cups, bowls, a fish and a dolphin, goblets, and larger sculptural pieces. Every project taught me something new about the material and about myself.

At the same time, I returned to another interest that had followed me for years: jewelry making and silversmithing and working with metal felt like a natural companion to glass.

And, so, eventually the two began to merge in my work.

Today I continue to explore glass, silversmithing, jewelry making, mixed media, natural materials, and whatever new techniques capture my imagination. My inspiration often comes from flowers, shells, stones, ocean life, and the countless small wonders found in nature.

What I have realized through all of these experiences is that creativity was never something I discovered. It was something I returned to.

Art is not only about making beautiful objects. For me, it is about curiosity, learning, experimentation, and finding meaning through the act of creating. Every piece I make carries a part of that journey. Perhaps that is why I love working with my hands so much. It allows ideas to become real. It allows imagination to take form.

And in some small way, it allows me to leave something behind that did not exist before.