I needed the journey,and to
learn by doing rather than by the cleverer method, listen to those who know, i.e. often elders.
I needed to ‘reinvent the wheel’.
Education
1991-1994 Apprenticeship Goldschmiedeatelier Bernd Hermsen in Düsseldorf & Berufschule in Essen, Germany.
2015-2017 MFA Nonfiction Writing, The School of The Arts, Columbia University in the City of New York, New York, USA.
Finally I have stopped trying to force-squeeze myself into a professional box. Writing, smithing, returning to university studies again and again. These were—and continue to be—aspects and expressions of my life journey. I am also a mother of three and a recent grandmother. It is all interrelated and one area feeds the other. It took years and many journeys to became content to slow down and land--in Stockholm, in Södemanland county, in family. It also took diligent research into my family of origin, which tyúrned out so worth doing as the work yielded a richer personal as well as historical perspective. A child of the history-free 1970s Swedish school left in me a growing urge to resolve questions I did not know were brewing. I needed to dig, lay it out, in order to relax into an expanded understanding of who I am and where my fellow travelers and I stand.
I need words, I need to reflect on words and sentences, in order to learn to live in the world. And yet I chose jewelry, an old craft that is literally a wordless luxury. I think of jewelry as able to speak, though, at least some does. It can speak of love (self-love included), union, lost worlds and promise. Jewelry can sensitize us as we recognize our tastes and our limits—even our prejudices. It can make us aware of what appears as seamless, harmonious, outlandish! There is at least equal value in an object that has a fleeting, fragile and imperfect quality as there is in something that is rich and appears strong. That is how I see it. Wearing jewelry, adorning ourselves is universal. It addresses the condition common to all humans, that of living inside a body through all its inescapable transitions. If the tactile language a worn unique object speaks can do anything along these celebratory lines (in our digital era), it makes me happy.