Paradise is a myth. It’s a concoction of our own devices created to comfort us from the rigors of daily life and the sorrows of the human condition. Paradise gives us hope for something meaningful beyond this mortal life. It’s a beautiful myth. So beautiful that even knowing it’s a myth only slightly diminishes its value. I perpetuate the myth. Using old costume jewelry as my building blocks I create visions of a remanufactured utopia. I find these discarded pieces at swap meets and yard sales and conjure them into new images of life in ebullient and glorified forms. They dance and soar in front of me in harmonic expressions of trinket afterlife joy. A Big, blingy bijou Shangri-La.