My Life By Design-March Meet The Maker

March 24th, 2022

It’s hard for me to call myself an artist.  It’s not easy.  It’s not that I don’t believe I am, it’s just a word that at times seems so pretentious.  I am a designer.  That’s what I am.  It all started when I was a kid.  I would make my Barbie Doll’s clothes with tissues and aluminum foil and I would color on wrapping paper and make it fit perfectly onto the doll with scotch tape.  Then I began drawing.  I would draw and create caricatures and cartoon like drawings of girls with big lips and long eyelashes.  My Aunt  Sue said to me, “You’d be a really good cartoonist.”  For my high school’s prom, I was asked to design the pamphlet.   I was obsessed with lyrics and words and music.  Nothing beats a song.  Nothing.  From the melody, to the lyrics to the feeling it gives me, there’s nothing like it.  I can’t write a song, but I could and can play them.  Round and round they’d go on a turntable, in a CD player, on a cart that I had to use at Jamming Gold, a radio station that I worked for that was part of Greater Media back in 1999.  Music is my therapy.  Dancing, another thing there’s nothing like.  Another creative expression.

In 1991, it became clear to me that I wanted to work in the world of art, but I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do.  At the time, I was enthralled with Art History.  It was my absolute favorite class.  Earlier than that in 1988, I wanted to be a fashion designer but I knew that would be too much.  Too much work, too much money, so much and I wouldn’t get paid unless I made it big. Years later it was photography.  Black and white photography, which I would like to say there is nothing like and honestly, there is nothing like burning a photograph in a red room.  Nothing.  I still love photography.  I took to it when I went to Delaware County Community College and it was all that I and several other students thought about, fixated on, lived for.  We would take day trips into Philadelphia and walk around the Navy Yard. We’d take photos of the ships and the rope that resided on top of the ships.   I’d think of my dad who was once in the Navy.  We’d peruse old barns, take photos of doors with broken glass, etc.  Some of the best photos I took at that time were of people.  

My photography professor asked the class to take a candid photo of people.  He wanted us to capture a mood.  In 1998 my grandmother died and my mom and her three other siblings all came together with the rest of the family to attend her funeral.  My mom and her siblings were rarely all together at once.  I brought my camera for the occasion.  All four of them were looking into her grave and between my mom and my aunt’s faces, I took a shot that woke my professor and classmates right up.   My mom and aunt’s faces were filled with grief.  Pure white drained grief.  Some of the students asked, “Why would you ever bring a camera to a funeral?”  My professor said, “Why not?  It’s perfect.  You caught two people, in particular, that are grief stricken.  This is what I wanted.  Pure candid emotion.  It’s real and it’s what happens.  People die.”  Some of my favorite photos are self portraits. I look back and see a young girl, age 28.  I can see right into her thoughts, dreams and desires.  I can also see her insecurities.  That is why I love them.  When I think of that 28 year old (me) and how she was and try to see her in the me that is now, it’s different.  I’m different, but not so much.    

When I look at my self portrait to the right, I remember everything about that moment in time.  It was the late 90’s and I lived in Norwood, PA, almost right across from the Erin Pub.  I wanted to live there because it was so close to I-95 so I could be in the city in a jif. I worked as a makeup artist for Lancôme in Macy’s and I also worked at WMMR in promotions and production.  I was getting ready to go to Temple University.  I paid for college at that point.  My mom didn’t want to pay for me to go to college in my late 20’s and I don’t blame her.  I worked a lot and I had no idea what was coming my way.  None.  Many of the friends I had then I have now.  I thought I was going to graduate with a degree in Communications-Journalism and PR.  I didn’t.  I had one year left to graduate and I said screw this, I am done.  I have an associates, but…who cares. I did enjoy a brief stint as a journalist for the NHS in Britain.  You could have never told me I would design jewelry.  I wouldn’t have believed you, but in many ways it makes sense.  I loved jewelry and fashion.  Most of my time was spent in Philadelphia back then.  I miss those days.  I spent so much time at the Art Museum and PAFA.  Eating at some of the best restaurants in the city, working in and around the city, being in the city was my jam.  Funny.  Today I want the opposite.  Give me a quiet place, a quiet location with lots of land and fresh clean air.  I still want Philly’s food though.  

Do I see myself as a jewelry designer for the rest of my life?  Maybe.  I’m sure it will always be in my life because there is always a need for people to have things fixed, repaired or redesigned and I can do that.  I still want to work around paintings, in a museum, around the greats.  I can dream.  I’d still like to study the artists of so long ago.  The true artists and painters that developed chiaroscuro.  Maybe I’ll go back to scooping ice cream again one day.  That was once a job I had at age 15 when I could actually tolerate milk.  Then again, I see myself as being retired, living a simple life on a few acres somewhere far far away and in that simple home that I will own will be all that I love and honestly, I have a feeling that none of it will be jewelry.  Jewelry.   I love making it.   It frustrates me at times, but I enjoy the challenge.  This fall it will be eighteen years of making, designing and repairing jewelry.  The thing is, it’s what I do, but it’s not who I am.  I’ll take a studio with lots of light behind my simple home for all of the artistic endeavors I have yet to do.  That way, I can make a beautiful mess out there.