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I was born in Riga, part of the former Soviet Union state of Latvia to an educated, yet middle class family. My father was an Engineer and my mother, a pharmacist. I believe it was from my parents that I inherited my patience and attention to detail. It was from both my maternal and paternal grandmothers that I inherited my creativity and resourcefulness.. Ever since then I can remember, I was making something with my hands -- clothes for the dolls, little tea sets out of clay, hand drawn portraits of my family and neighbors, personalized greeting cards with dried flowers and other crafts.. As I grew my creative skills expanded -- that is until I discovered chemistry. In the former Soviet Republics, all students were required to volunteer a number of hours every summer helping out with various jobs. I always chose to work with alongside my mother in the pharmacy. I loved working with her and just being in the lab because of the precise actions required to measure out the ingredients for the medications and the careful way they were mixed. Her work interested me so much that I took extra chemistry and biology classes in preparation for college entrance exams. However, as in all of life, things change, and so did my plans. The fall of the Soviet Union put a new direction on my life. Once the fall of the Soviet Union changed the face of Latvia, this change affected all of my family. Several months after my graduation from high school, my parents put their lives on hold to move my sister and I across the ocean to New York City. At the time, I still aspired to be a pharmacist so I applied to Long Island University in New York which offered a degree in pharmacy which would lead to me finding a part-time job at a pharmacy in my new country. However, it came to be that life in the United States and work in the United States were much different than they would have been in my county of birth -- so, I searched for a new dream. Having said that, I would not have traded those years of education and the pursuit of that dream for anything in the world -- it was though pursuing that life and doing that work that I met my husband to whom I am married to this day. It took me several years, a variety of jobs, and numerous classes to realize that what makes me happy and productive is to work with my hands and create beautiful things. When my husband became interested in working with chain mail, we began experimenting in the medium as a couple, experimenting with weaves and sizes, with me adding beads and other materials to different projects. After a while, I made a simple bead & wire bracelet...and I was hooked! Wanting to learn more about jewelry design, I scoured the internet for any and all jewelry making information I could find. When I exhausted what I could learn in practical skills on the internet, I started buying books and took my first formal jewelry design class. I identify that as the turning point in the journey for my craft. The class was taught by one of the professors at Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City. As a result of that class, I was able to organize my art portfolio and applied and was accepted into the prestigious Jewelry Design Program at F.I.T. I have been designing and making jewelry ever since, both for my own line, and on an contract basis and consignment for various other companies. It is my goal to share my love of design and the expression of my design through jewelry with a wide audience. I hope that the people that wear my designs get the same sense of joy I receive when making them. |