About this site

Where to begin? I started with art school, then made the common progression into the corporate world, spent a few years flailing about, only to run, kicking and screaming, back to a more creative space. I enjoy painting, drawing, sculpting, woodworking and photography. Having experience in programming and graphics, I also like working with computers and do a lot of my own web work. I became interested in making jewelry for the same reason I think many do: I couldn’t find what I wanted for myself.

A few years ago, I started shopping for beads and haven’t stopped since. I love the luscious, good-enough-to-eat quality of vibrantly colored, natural gemstone beads and the soft, richness of freshwater pearls. Some of my favorite gemstone beads include amazonite, carnelian, amethyst, labradorite, and various from the quartz, serpentine and topaz families.

One day, browsing for beads in a local store, I glanced down at a book on making chainmail. From the instructions in that book and electrical wire I bought at the hardware store, I started making chains. I’m still learning – experimenting with different materials, weaves and techniques. My favorite chainmail weaves are Jens Pind Linkage and the Helm Chain.

There is something indescribably satisfying about working with metal, I can only keep going. I work toward acquiring the tools and knowledge to create my chains and findings directly from raw materials.
Oh, my name is Michelle…

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An Excerpt from Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself

This quote has a way of picking me up and knocking me down at the same time:

This hour I tell things in confidence,
I might not tell everybody but I will tell you.
[20]
Who goes there! Hankering, gross, mystical, nude?
How is it I extract strength from the beef I eat?
What is a man anyhow? What am I? and what are you?
All I mark as my own you shall offset it with your own,
Else it were time lost listening to me.
I do not snivel that snivel the world over,
That months are vacuums and the ground but wallow and filth,
That life is a suck and a sell, and nothing remains at the end but
   threadbare crape and tears.
Whimpering and truckling fold with powders for
   invalids…conformity goes to the fourth removed,
I cock my hat as I please indoors or out.
 
Shall I pray? Shall I venerate and be ceremonious?
I have pried through the strata and analyzed to a hair,
And counselled with doctors and calculated close and
   found no sweeter fat than sticks to my own bones.
In all people I see myself, none more and not one a
   barleycorn less,
And the good or bad I say of myself I say of them.
And I know I am solid and sound,
To me the converging objects of the universe perpetually flow,
All are written to me, and I must get what the writing means.
And I know I am deathless,
I know this orbit of mine cannot be swept by the carpenter’s compass,
I know I shall not pass like a child’s carlacue cut with a burnt stick at night.
 
I know I am august,
I do not trouble my spirit to vindicate itself or be understood,
I see that the elementary laws never apologize,
I reckon I behave no prouder than the level I plant my house by after all.
I exist as I am, that is enough,
If no other in the world be aware I sit content,
And if each and all be aware I sit content.
One world is aware, and by far the largest to me, and that is myself,
And whether I come to my own today or in ten thousand or ten million years,
I can cheerfully take it now, or with equal cheerfulness I can wait.
My foothold is tenoned and mortised in granite,
I laugh at what you call dissolution,
And I know the amplitude of time.

Notes