I was born and raised in India and came to the US almost fifty years ago. After college in India, I joined a four-year art program but dropped out after the first introductory year to pursue a graduate degree in English Literature. The art school was considered a vocational school, my sister and I were the only female students. Our father persuaded us to go back to academics, as he didn’t think a vocation in arts was appropriate for women in our family. Almost twenty-seven years later, here in California, I had the opportunity to enroll in metal arts classes. This opportunity came in a chance encounter with a local librarian whose metal brooch I admired and inquired how I could learn to make such things. She sent me a catalog of classes at the Richmond Art Center. I have been learning ever since. A couple of years after I started classes at the College of Marin (while continuing classes with Hugh Power at the RAC), our jewelry teacher selected a few students to form a small partnership of jewelers to rent a space at ArtWorks Downtown in San Rafael. We called our group the Marin Jewelers Guild. I have been part of the Guild since its inception in 2000.