When I was young I loved rummaging through my grandmother’s bureau drawers, enchanted by her treasure trove of costume jewelery which she kept in a jumble of tiny boxes, each with its own story. Growing up in rural Connecticut, my passions were creating and curating  my collections of objects found and acquired, and, as my mother used to say, “working with my hands.”  I progressed from hand-loomed potholders to making bowls out of natural clay from a local streambed, to oil painting.   After working on the Navajo Reservation midway through college, I moved  West permanently, having both fallen  in love with the wide western landscape, and  met my first silversmiths who made me want to get my hands on some silver and start making jewelry. I finished my BFA at the University of Colorado, and after ten years of making jewelry in Boulder, I settled in Nebraska, first on a farm and then in Lincoln.  I now work with two assistants and my husband, Craig Roper, who manages the business end of the studio.

My design vocabulary derives from a wide range of sources which reflect my personal interests: the natural forms of  rocks and seashells that I’ve collected on walks since childhood, the lines and contours of landscapes where I’ve lived and travelled, the rich surfaces and intriguing shapes I find in weathered areas of the city.  More recently I have been working on a series of designs inspired by the subtle, repetitive forms of the flora and wild grasses of the prairie.  In miniaturizing a vast open landscape by creating these pieces of jewelry, I am able to focus on the details of my surroundings which might otherwise be easily overlooked.

Working with the materials is the most exciting part of the process for me.  Simply put, I like making things. I’m interested in tribal and ancient jewelry which illustrates the human need to arrange found objects in new, meaningful arrangements.  In one of a kind pieces, I exercise my love of color  by incorporating a  wide range of colored stones in endless combinations.  My other body of work focuses on oxidized sterling combined with 18k and 22k gold. It’s important that my work be both sculptural and wearable. Many of my designs are abstract, leaving the wearer open to create a personal, intuitive relationship with the piece.