(light electronic music) - I play with fire, I zone out on working with metal, it is, it spoke to me.

(light electronic music) I'm an artist.

I'm not a jeweler and there is a difference.

I have friends that are jewelers that are brilliant.

Some of the stuff they do I could never do, I don't have the patience nor the temperament for it because materials talk to me.

(light electronic music) I grew up in Detroit around Central High School.

My mom was a huge art fan and so it was also when I think back about it now nothing in our house ever went unused.

We were always creating stuff and so I guess I had a natural aptitude for it.

(light electronic music) I had a very interesting life but I wasn't doing my craft all the time.

I'd come back to it, I'd do it and in this particular facility, Burmingham Bloomfield Arts Center, I was in my 30s when I discovered this place and so I start, this place started getting me back into it.

I have an affinity for certain types of jewelry, most of the stuff that inspires me comes out of the ancient Middle East.

That's kind of why I call it the ancient craft, ancient Africa or African nations, Middle Eastern nations.

My inspiration tends to be around those regions, those processes I have an affinity for ancient techniques.

I went to Africa last year and spent time with the Maasai.

I was really honored to do that and fascinated by their processes because they're so raw.

I mean when you have people making like annealing metal over dung ovens I mean which is pretty fascinating to watch.

(light electronic music) I do a lot of really organic stuff.

I'm very fond of happy accidents.

You know a lot of times other people will go for refining something I'm like no no no no that's perfect, leave it just like that it works for me so I don't strive to make art that is real refined.

(light electronic music) I have a ring that I'm working on now.

I had no clue when I started with this ring what I was gonna do and I ended up with a stone that I had no idea I was gonna get but it just kinda all evolved and the final touches are this evening on that piece.

(light electronic music) I have a client that's Ecuadorian.

I did some pieces for, I did a bangle bracelet for him that was really interesting and the design ended up being my interpretation of an ancient Ecuadorian palatial aqueduct and so it was filled with a blue resin.

It was done in copper, 18 karat gold and sterling silver and so the resin that I used in it is blue so it looked like it was a pool at the top and it looked like there was blue running through the veins because I cracked it open.

I had another client, a young man she was very close to was killed in the naval accident off the coast of Japan a few years ago and she went to his funeral at Arlington and they gave her one of the shell casings from when they did the 21 gun salute for him.

I was in that President's Honor Guard, I was in the unit that did that so when she sent me the shell casing and she was like I need something made out of this and then I took the shell casing and turned it into part of that bracelet so it came out pretty remarkable I was really proud of it.

That's tremendous honor for me and I have had people give me their parent's jewelery or grandma's jewelry or you know different pieces.

I got this urn that I'm getting ready to do.

That's just a huge honor for somebody to entrust that kind of thing to me.

(light electronic music) I recently have been doing some bracelets that are African, different parts of Africa but they're currency jewelry., with the wearable currency jewelry.

Some people get a little miffed because when they see them a lot of time they see it as representing slavery but the reality of it with those bracelets though was that yes they sometimes were involved in slave trading but the people that were using those bracelets in these wearable jewelry, that had little or nothing to do with slave trade.

That was a method of people currency wearing it because they didn't have pockets and things and so they would wear these things and sometimes it would be a display of wealth people would barter with them, so would be the equivalent of us wearing dollar bills or hundred dollar bills on our wrist.

So I've been doing some of those recently, I've been casting those.

The beading that I do, I typically use African trade beads.

They're typically ancient and they have a value and a lot of significance.

So the stuff that I create has some historical significance or some meaning to me was when I create it.

It's more than just a beaded bracelet or a beaded necklace.

I feel like it's where I come from, it resonates with me, it always has.

For me, working with any of those materials is the ability to take something and create something beautiful, that someone will enjoy and other people will marvel at and look at and say oh that's so beautiful or interesting or whatever.

It's just always cool.

I guess it always resonated with me that why are we attracted to jewelry and just why do we sing, why do we dance, why do some things make us happy?

And wearable art or jewelry for me, is just part of that beautification.

Traditionally, humans like to embellish, they like to beautify themselves whether it be with paint, if you go back and look at old cave drawings people would paint themselves with mud or whatever and then they would adorn themselves with bones or beads or rocks or whatever that they found, feathers that they found that were beautiful so there's something to me that resonates with us as humans about beauty.

About the embracing of beauty.

For me I think it's a reflection of our psyche, our desire to always embrace the beautiful.

And so jewelry, wearable art is just another component or aspect of that.