I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t creating. As a child, I was deeply connected to the natural world-building mud houses for frogs, studying insects, and spending entire days outdoors. Playing with dolls was never enough for me; wanted to build for them. I folded, cut, and taped paper into tiny pieces of furniture and handmade appliances for their imagined homes.

In the 1970s, I developed an unusual passion: collecting litter from the streams beneath a small overpass in my neighborhood. Armed with a trash bag, I gathered discarded objects left behind by strangers, already drawn to the stories hidden within found materials.

As a teenager in the early 1980s, I embraced thrifting and vintage fashion. Vintage jewelry quickly became another lifelong fascination. By the time I entered college, I immersed myself in drawing and painting, though flat surfaces never fully satisfied me. I often mixed gel mediums into acrylic paint to create texture and dimension. I disliked the bounce of stretched canvas and instead chose to work on the floor and eventually on wood panels, searching for surfaces that felt more grounded and tactile.

Surprisingly, it wasn’t until my early sixties that I began incorporating found and thrifted jewelry into my artwork. Like many artists, I was experimenting and following curiosity wherever it led. The textured metal fragments began finding their way into figures that embodied strength and presence. My work first explored anatomical forms, then gradually evolved toward female figures that symbolize power, resilience, and endurance.

Looking back, the thread connecting my work has always been there: a love of found objects, texture, transformation, and the beauty hidden within discarded things.