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jewelry designs when she found time to make them. Through experimentation with techniques and materials, Renk taught herself enameling and other metalsmithing skills. However, the demands of managing a gallery were becoming increasingly burdensome. In time, she was able to sell her interest in the gallery and move on. She exited Chicago for San Francisco; the year was 1948. In every good narrative, there are certain defining moments, things that happen to the main character that must be told because they change the arc of the story; such is the case with Renk at this juncture. In 1950-51, she left San Francisco and embarked on a trip to Spain and Morocco with the now legendary weaver Lenore Tawney. She also traveled to Paris, spending a year painting in oils. In the spring of 1951, Renk met the great artist Constantin Brancusi in his Parisian studio. Brancusi had open studios on Sunday and he invited young people for the purpose of checking to "see if they had art talent." Renk recounted the revelatory meeting she had had with Brancusi: the venerated sculptor would look at the hand of each young person under a magnifying glass and then make some pronouncement; when Brancusi scrutinized her hand under the glass he pronounced "you have the potential." Merry was very affected by this experience. It was a reaffirmation of her choice to become an artist. Based on this occurrence, Renk made a watercolor painting titled Brancusi's Oracle. This launched a series of "Memory" paintings, watercolors in a typical scale of eighteen by twenty-four inches although a few are larger; most containing words that become part of the composition and serve a narrative purpose. Renk used these paintings as memory markers to imprint the experience for her, her children and grandchildren, so precious were the moments that she did not want them to fade. The next and final chapter of Renk's life involved a hilltop house in San Francisco, a potter and life-long companion/ husband, two daughters and grandchildren, multiple wedding crowns, and museum collections. Once she returned to San Francisco from her travels in Europe, Renk became deeply involved in the arts community, and met and married the talented potter Earle Watt Curtis in 1958. Merry and Earle started a family and soon had two daughters, Bonnie and Sandra Curtis. Renk continued to work in her home-studio, taking on small private commissions and specializing in hair ornaments, and engaging in the art of enameling, "just for the love of it." It was not until 1969, when the "Objects: USA" exhibition commissioned her to make Wedding Crown, a fourteen karat interlocking gold circlet with an encircling "bush" of two hundred fifty pearls, that Renk received international recognition for her virtuosic craftsmanship. GRAPHITE DRAWING of designs for a sterling silver Owl Ring, commissioned by Marian Norberg, 1978. OUR BABY BONNIE. "Memory" watercolor painting of Merry Renk holding baby Bonnie in a sling while at work making wedding rings. It commemorates the birth of Renk's eldest daughter Bonnie in 1959.