Inspired by the beautiful stained glass in my childhood church, I jumped at the chance to take a semi-private stained-glass class from a Winston-Salem, NC artist in 1999.  And, the journey began!

In 2004, at a glass and bead show, I watched Pam East make glass beads with some frit (crushed glass), torch and copper tubing.  I was immediately hooked!  I bought “Making Glass Beads” by Cindy Jenkins and began teaching myself how to make glass beads.  This new art of melting glass and shaping it on a mandrel added to my love of glass and I soon found myself in a sea of glass beads.  I took the perfect beads and started making jewelry with them. The others got reduced to frit (to use later) or put into my kaleidoscopes. As I became more involved with creating jewelry, I started adding more mediums, such as copper, fabric, yarn and clay, to my designs.

These experiments soon evolved into designs outside of jewelry and stained glass; resulting in cloth art dolls, mixed media, alcohol ink paintings, and, most recently, acrylic pour paintings.  I’m never at a loss for inspiration.  Living on my farm in the Great Smoky Mountains with my husband, horses, dogs, cats and cluster of chickens provides me with an abundance of colors, materials and ideas for new art projects.