I grew up in Northeast Philadelphia. The Delaware River has been a part of my world as long as I can remember. My parents’ car drove over the bridges into New Jersey. Back then I though all the boundaries between states were rivers and bridges. We visit the USS Olympia where it was docked on the River in Fishtown where my father’s family lived.
When I grew up and got married I lived in Bristol Borough, also on the Delaware River. We launched our first sailboat onto the Delaware and realized quickly the challenges of having a sailboat without a motor on a river with both commercial shipping and a swift current. We moved it to a nearby lake in Tullytown, but the Delaware remained my home waters as our next couple of sailboats grew out of the confines of nearby Lake Van Sciver.
I’m so thrilled to be having an exhibit of my work at Glen Foerd. It’s a gilded age mansion in Northeast Philadelphia located on the banks of the Delaware. The first floor library looks out onto the river through floor to ceiling windows and is the perfect place to show my work that is inspired by not only the shapes of ships, but my own time living on the Delaware river on a sailboat. The exhibit will be on display from June 30, 2024 to July 31. It can be view during Glen Foerd’s open hours and I’ll be giving an artist talk about my work on Saturday July 13, 2024 at 1:00pm. I do hope you will join me.
Coriander told me about an idea for a ring last summer. It’s been on my mind for a while and I managed to squeeze it in with all the other work this holiday season. Her ring says, Be Curious Be Kind. Coriander wrote a post about its meaning on 
It happened when I was teaching an introductory workshop in needle felting, also known as dry felting, at the Tacony LAB. The “LAB” is a community art center in the local neighborhood where I live in Northeast Philadelphia and I work there as a coordinator as well as instructor. I had eight students around the tables shaping wool roving into small whimsical forms. None of them had ever tried needle felting before and each person was enjoying it immensely with the room experiencing periods of near silence with only the sound of poking needles.
My life has always been surrounded by craft. Tools, materials and processes have shaped my approach both as an artist and educator. It fuels my curiosity about the ways that different techniques can be used in new ways. As a jeweler, interaction with the body and wear-ability are as important as the quality of the work, but as an artist and process geek, I can not help but constantly investigate new ways of making.
During the late 1990s I lived on a sailboat docked on Toms River in Pine Beach, NJ. It was a beautiful place to live, but I was feeling a little isolated from friends and family. I was able to connect online with a group of women that eventually formed the core of an intentional family for me. We met in diners, each other’s homes and sometimes on the beach to celebrate the seasons. It was a magical time that lasted almost three years. As time passed we scattered, but all of these women still hold a special place in my heart.