Colleen Schindler-Lynch was born in Windsor, Ontario, Canada.  She exhibited interest in the arts early and finished a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree at the University of Windsor in 1990.  She continued with graduate studies at Louisiana State University finishing her Master of Fine Arts in 1993.  There, she had the opportunity to study other areas and found her way to the jewellery studio. For the past 7 years Colleen has been teaching in the School of Fashion at Ryerson University in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.  She instructs both accessory design and illustration.  In 2005, she launched a personal accessory company called Coco’s Closet and was honoured in 2007 when she placed 4^th overall in the Swarovski “Create your Style” worldwide competition with a hand-knit sterling silver Elizabethan collar.  Colleen is currently working on other pieces for “The cuff suite,” translating garment details such as pockets and cuffs into wearable art.  She continues to illustrate for clients, most recently, The Ontario Public School Board Association’s magazine “Education Today”.  She presented a paper at the IFFTI conference in 2007 entitled “Extreme Illustration – Sex and violence in illustration”. Following that presentation, she was invited to contribute to “Illustrative” a publication that accompanied illustration exhibitions in Paris and Berlin.   Colleen has created jewellery for designers at Toronto Fashion week on several occasions, most recently, for Lovas by Wesley Badanjak and Saniya Khan for the LG Fashion week Fall 2010 runway shows.