I’ve always used my hands to transform paper, wood, yarn, whatever was at reach. I‘ve modeled, modified, crafted, set apart and reconstructed all kinds of objects and materials. From 1973 to 1976, I studied metal smithing and enameling with Jorge Cohen, a fine jeweler, and that showed me a new path. However, it took me a long time to make the decision of becoming a full time jeweler artist. In the meantime, I started a family, went to University, became a Language and Literature teacher, and a four-language translator. Later, I worked as an editor, and then became a big firm’s Communications Director. During those years, my craft occupied a tiny space in my life.

Now, children have grown up, and it’s been several years since I closed the door of my last office. So, I put my old tools into full-time work. And I am so glad I did! I feel really back at home in my workshop. In 2009 I studied lost wax technique with jeweler Richard Daroch, and this opened a new universe, where I can model a soft wax piece and then see it become a hard sterling silver object. Sculpture and silver smithing together, a real joy for me!

When I sit at my workbench, sometimes an object or its idea are already in my mind, but many times I simply start and let my hands do. Soon, something new appears. And I recognize old inspiration, flashes of ideas, and a mixture of feelings that struggle to come to life. All coming from deep inside.

My mother was an artist herself and ran an art gallery for some time. Also, my father, his mother and his uncle had great drawing and painting skills but they could not develop their art; times were hard and art was not valued in their family. I believe this environment, a mixture of appreciation of art and hunger for personal development, finally pushed me to produce.

A poem by Alfonsina Storni (Argentina, 1892-1938) expresses these feelings better. It goes more or less like this:

Perhaps all I felt in my poems
Was just what could never be.
Things forbidden and repressed
Within the family, among the women

They say in the family houses
All the rules were already set.
That the women in my family
Kept silent… Oh, perhaps yes…

Wishes of freedom chased my mother,
But her eyes filled with sorrow
And, in the darkness, she wept.

And that, caustic, defeated, mutilated,
All in her soul that was caged,
I think I’ve unwillingly unleashed.

From Irremediably (1919)