Designing, like any creative endeavor, is a process that draws not just on your artistic sensibility, but from the whole experience of your life. Where, how and in what context you live is probably the single greatest influence on a person’s work. In this way, aesthetics, tastes and interests develop from a path that is ever changing and cumulative. Ultimately, my goal is to live a full and challenging life, like a big snowball, just continually packing on all that I’ve done on the top.

At 17, I left Boston and moved to Hirakata, Japan to study ceramics at Kansai University. At the time I spoke no Japanese and for the 6 months I lived in Japan, I lived with a Japanese family that spoke no English. This incredibly difficult and rewarding experience set the tone for how I’ve tried to live my life. After returning to the states, I counter balanced the intensity of that experience through immersion in a quiet, rural life, moving to Vershire, Vermont to live and work on a farm.

I moved to New Orleans to attend Tulane University’s School of Architecture. During my sophomore year I took a course in ceramic sculpture that changed my life. In architecture: the construction, forms and mix of materials fascinated me, but it was ceramic sculpture that seemed to combine my love of materials and process, with the freedom and beauty of organic expression.

I graduated from Tulane University with a B.F.A. in ceramic sculpture and a minor in Asian studies. During this time, I also completed programs in fashion design at the Parsons School of Design in Paris and Japanese language & art history at Sophia University in Tokyo.

After graduation, I moved to San Francisco. It was here that I began to work as a wax carver for a jeweler, spending four years with him learning all about jewelry, while still maintaining a ceramics studio in The Mission District. Although I loved living in San Francisco, it never felt like home.

Eventually, I returned to the East Coast, ready to start my own company. When I decided to create Roka Jewelry, I spent six months sequestered away just learning, experimenting and designing before diving into the marketplace. Jewelry is the format that finally allows me to combine the organic expressiveness of ceramics with the design elements of architecture and fabulous materials that are so beautiful. It is small-scale sculpture. This is the inspiration behind my Roka Collection.

I now live in Manhattan, which feels like a vortex for creativity. I have a passion for cooking & travel and am heavily influenced by many artists’ works; the sculpture of both Giacometti and Naguchi in particular, with Andy Goldsworthy, Susan Rothenberg, Laurent Millet, Steven De Staebler and Hung Lui being some of my favorites. It is certainly this fabric of experiences, influences and inspirations that makes my new collection the best work I’ve ever done.

I feel now is the time to re-vitalize the jewelry category. My generation of women can afford and want real jewelry, but we don’t want our mother’s jewelry. We want something that is fresh, dynamic, feminine and urban that reflects the times and style in which we live. Mine, is a body of work inspired by fashion, but not subject to it. I’ve taken the traditional format of fine jewelry and injected it with a younger, more urban and graphic vibe.