I grew up a South African and came to Melbourne seeking asylum as a conscientious objector. It was the year of my Saturn Return, I was 28.

At the time I was a jewellery maker, having begun my craft career some six years previous to that after bending somebody's Mercedes in Pretoria and having to find a source of cash.

I bought a side of cowhide, some lino-carving tools, spirit dyes and buckles, sold the resulting belts and have never really had to work for anybody since.

I began a romance with metal when I came across jewellery-making tools in a glass box display in Cape Town station. I started to create metal accessories for the handbags, belts and sandals I'd been making and naturally turned to jewellery.

In '79/'80 I taught myself knife making and subsequently forging (blacksmithing) while living the 'self sufficient' mud brick life at Bobin Creek on the Mid-North Coast of NSW.

Two home births later we moved to Tasmania with the boys and some few years later, in 1994 I established 'Hammer and Hand Metal and Jewellery Collective' in the Salamanca Arts Centre in Hobart, chiefly as a way to afford the rent and subsequently for the joy, inspiration and comradeship of shared time with other metal heads.

In April 2008 I moved to Byron Bay and in November of that year opened the Byron Bay chapter of Hammer and Hand in the Arts and Industry Estate.

So I am a metal artisan, a decorative blacksmith with a sore neck, a sculptor, bronze caster, jewellery maker, stainless steel utensil smith, fire bowl and 'object creator'.

I draw my inspiration from ancient Celtic clasps... the plight of the Thylacine, the human condition and a sheer bloody-minded determination to make a buck, stay afloat and stay happy. I achieve this at my workshop at the Collective, market my work through the two Hammer and Hands, some very good design galleries and sundry eclectic and interesting others.

I hold that communication is a priority for the survival of the planet and that the artist is central to this process. The Hive is an elegant tool in this endeavour, and is aptly named!