"A friend said that if you want to get your work on the international market, win a prestigious award at the beginning of the new millennium, because that will really be a story.
I said, to myself, 'Okay, let's win it!' – and I did!"

      Brazilian-born jewelry designer, Premen, is shown on the left holding the prize she received for her winning entry in the De Beers Diamonds-International Award 2000.
     Considered the "Oscars" of the jewelry industry, it is the world's largest and most prestigious jewelry design competition.
It was a breakthrough, not only for her as a professional jewelry designer but as a meditator.

     Warm, smart, articulate – and stunningly beautiful to boot – Premen has the kind of creative intelligence that finds expression in virtually any field she might care to turn to. She has been a musician and a professional dancer as well as portrait sketcher, clothes designer, "hair sculptor" and, now, most famously, as a jewelry designer.
      Her feminine, creative aspect is balanced by the curiosity of a natural scientist. It is the latter that has her delving into questions such as "What does music do to listener?" "How does a certain stone affect someone?" "How to find a name for a piece I create? How will that name affect the person who buys or wears it?"
      The creator and inquirer within her mesh in her self-described work as an "art scientist." In fact she sees all creative people who integrate meditation into their work as being art scientists.

      A meditator for more than eighteen years Premen regularly finds time each day to listen to an Osho audio discourse.
     "When I start getting stressed I always do twenty-one days of Osho Dynamic meditation. That's usually two to three times a year! Sometimes I get together with others to do Kundalini – everybody loves that – however, most of the time I meditate totally alone."
     But she sees meditation less as an activity and more of a quality that transforms her jewelry-making.

     "I felt that my entering the competition would be a door in getting across the message of the inner diamond: the silent space that radiates outwards, that everyone can see.
"Now that I have established myself as an award-winner, I have a certain status – I'm not some off-the-wall weirdo or eccentric! – and people listen to people who have won something. That's just the language of the world: 'Show you are successful in our terms and then we can talk!' This is the game, this is the way the world operates, so I play the game."

"People find it interesting that jewelry can be a reminder of consciousness."

"I call my work 'Objective art' jewelry, and people ask, 'What do you mean by that?'
They love the idea that they can use their jewelry not just to decorate their body but to remind them of something a little deeper about themselves."

"When I am placing the diamonds in a piece, I am putting silence there also, or it's as if I am simultaneously placing silence within myself."

"When I am sculpting I am creating empty space, removing this piece and that, and at the same time I am creating an empty space in me.
"When I finish, the form is there but there is more space than form. So I feel my own silence affects the work and the work creates silence in me.
"I feel my inner diamond shining!"

     "Someone told me that when a diamond is perfectly cut, if you submerge it in water it disappears: you can't see it though it is there. It's a perfect analogy for meditation!
      "I remember Osho saying consciousness is like a diamond, and like a diamond it can't be scratched. Again, there is a similarity with meditation: whatever you have lived it won't scratch your consciousness. That always remains intact, in its purity."

     "The diamonds are what rise from the empty space of the heart.

     "I want people to remember they have a heart to transform their emotions into nothingness. When you remember you have a heart and you bring consciousness to it, then it starts working by itself to transform you.

     "What I have created in the necklace is a redesign of the heart. The way it is usually depicted – as a red plastic static form – is such a visual cliché and anyway doesn't represent the true nature of the heart.
     "For me, the heart is always open, spacious, available and constantly in flux. It's these qualities that I have tried to convey through this piece."

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