I also teach an art class, called Young Artist Studio for disabled and able-bodied teenagers all in Santa Cruz, California.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
I have spent a few years raising sons that can flip, play music, and study Japanese.
 
 
 
I also have a husband that is a luthier and owns a music store (sylvanmusic.com), but prefers to play pool or poker or golf.
 
Then there are the dogs, they are just plain crazy!
I started my life in an edgy little steel town with a large immigrant population in Youngstown, Ohio. Life in Youngstown was shaped by steel and I was left with the image of the nighttime sky glowing pink from the blast furnaces 24 hours a day. It is this image that I have subconsciously recreated in my studio with my torch; heating, soldering, welding, coloring, and melting metal, not quite 24 hours a day, but close!
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
I spent many college years in photo booths, creating images to use for my BFA in sculpture where I incorporated sculpture, jewelry, conceptual art, and comedy, not necessarily in that order. My photo booth images became a ritual, and an obsession. They have been painted on silk, silk-screened, enameled, painted, traced, computerized, shrinky-dinked, made into a book, sewn, colored, plastered, etched, and cut out of metal.
 
I work mostly in copper using vitreous enamels sometimes for their colors, but mostly as a patina adding texture and an aged effect to my pieces. I likes to take a hard cold piece of metal and turn it into something soft, warm, and organic. I am attracted to using copper for many reasons. The total amount of copper on Earth is vast, and recycling is a major source of it in the modern world. Copper occurs naturally as 'native copper' and was known to some of the oldest civilizations on record. It has a history of use that is at least 10,000 years old. It is known as a good conductor of energy and is healing for the mind, body and spirit.
 
 I continues my love of fire by torch-firing my enamel pieces, which gives my work an earthy, hearty feeling. My work is influenced by the idea that refined jewelry doesn’t fit every person.
 
My influences growing up in the 60’s and 70’s were models who were mostly tall, skinny and blonde; being Greek, short, and dark, I didn’t fit into this category and my work reflects that there is no stereotype for women to fit into. My jewelry is clunky, organic, fat welded seams, sensitive, moody, expressing the feelings and emotions of a woman in America who is not perfect but who is a mother, a wife, a friend, a daughter, a sister… with real emotions of sadness and happiness and everything in between, who wants to express this with her body as an extension of her adornment. Working (wo)man's jewelry, meant to be worn everyday.