and I buy vintage jewelry from women that are not going to
use them anymore but loved them and tell me what joy and
pleasure they got from wearing them. I feel that energy
comes with the materials and I pass it on with my touch
added on. I used to try and profile my clients, the person that
would wear one of my more avant-garde pieces, and it always
surprises me who picks what. Sometimes it’s a petite woman
the chooses a rather large piece but it’s the personality and
the “je ne sais quoi” that carries it off. It always seems a
perfect fit.
Working with fragments of pieces must present some challenges,
when it comes to the creation of a piece do you approach it with
a set idea already formed or are you looking at what you have
available and composing from the abstract?
I may start out thinking that I have a design but invariably
it takes on its own life. I do work in the abstract, but as I am
mechanically engineering a piece to work, it will adjust to
its own design. The pieces find their place like a puzzle and
you just keep working to find the piece that wants to be in
that space. And yes, sometimes I will battle with something
for quite a while until I understand how to articulate it.
One of the things that has struck me about your work is the
second life notion of it, taking the discarded and creating the
new, when you look at what to use as the raw materials for the
pieces are you thinking of that as a reference?
Actually, when I began, I started in my own closet and before
I knew I had used all of my collections and built them into
new works. Then my friends wanted me to do the same for
them; then people saw their pieces, and it grew organically. I
prefer the quality of the pieces produced in the past. As I
started working with pieces like the military war medals and
the French porcelain room numbers, I felt honored to be able
to recycle them into something that would carry their legacy.
The fact that I am recycling pieces that people no longer
want or need wasn’t necessarily a conscience decision at first
but now has become a conscience force in my line.
When you’re out and about, whether at home or travelling, do
you feel a compulsion to look in stores where there might be some
items to work with?
I have to laugh out loud! I always say that in a past life I was
a racoon. My mind is a train that never stops. I am looking
at everything… my eyes are always open! I can be in a
restaurant and start thinking about making bracelets out of
spoons!! I am a real danger in Hardware stores and I have
purchased some of my best findings from climbing stores. A
lot of my favorite pieces were found when I wasn’t really
searching. I always have a feeling the pieces find me.
While not recycling in the conventional sense of just processing
something discarded back into raw materials there is certainly
huge sustainability to it, it’s the trifecta of reuse, recycle, rework,
do you feel the industry is acting on change or just talking about
it to avoid more pressure?
I don’t know if I can speak for the whole industry but
certainly people like Stella McCartney and Dries Van Noten
are conscious of their responsibility to the workers they
support and to the sustainability of their product. I feel and
hope it is a growing movement because we all must make an
effort to be conscious of our personal responsibility to the
planet and to our customers.
Whenever I look at anything in fashion be it garments or
accessories, I can’t help but conjure up a story, do you create a
vision of the original owner or the new purchaser when you’re
in the studio crafting pieces?
Fortunately, all of my pieces have a story, and many times, if
I have garnered materials from antique stores or private
sellers, they will tell me the specific story behind the pieces.
I’ve heard such heartwarming stories about the war medals,
.