"Beauty is a manifestation of secret natural laws,

I wonder what nature would create if it was not concerned about achieving a balanced ecosystem? Over thousands of years, nature has managed to evolve breathtakingly complex visual forms and surfaces while carefully cultivating environmentally adapted species that live and propagate for generations amongst many other species. Imagine the masterworks that would emerge if nature’s agenda was to develop life forms for purely aesthetic purposes. In many ways, this thought has formed the very core of my current body of jewelry.

For this collection of jewelry, I gathered photographs and specimens that represent numerous aesthetic variations found in our seen and unseen natural world. I supplemented this visual study with the writings of Charles Darwin and the natural history illustrations of Ernst Haeckel to gain more insight into evolution. In essence, I familiarized myself with nature’s visual and formal language. The closer I looked and compared species, the more I realized that physical bodies, skins, and growth patterns are decidedly ornamental.

I begin the process by gathering photographs that depict aesthetic variations of plants and animals found in our seen and unseen natural world. I look for Species that excite me – that are evolutionary wonders. From these photographs, I isolate the decorative qualities I see and recreate these elements in line drawings. These true to life renderings are then combined to make a pattern that becomes the foundation for all of the piercing, forming and carving done in metal, bone, and wood.  The result is a jewel steeped with the ornamental splendor that originates in Nature.