Give me creativity or give me death!

       In the spring of 2003 I was walking in downtown Clarksville where I worked and passed a window where the strangest looking animal was looking back at me. It was a Cornish Rex cat, white as snow and absolutely bald.  If you have ever seen one, you know the shock I experienced.  A new shop was coming to town, a bead store called RocknRocks, and Clarksville was ready for it. After the shop had its grand opening I wandered in here and there and thought I might buy a few beads to make a necklace or something.  In Clarksville, anything new is the next biggest thing so lots of people wandered in and out too.  I got to know the people there and KiKi, the strange looking thing that greeted me that first day.

A recent guardian angel that
 I gave to a longtime friend

       The next year I graduated from college and found myself with not much to do and little money to do it with.  I looked all over the city for a job and there was none to be had, but the owners of  RocknRocks needed a store clerk and they were willing to pay a decent wage and I didn't have to fill out anymore dead end applications for work.  I started there part time and graduated to full time and then managing the storefront while the team worked behind the scenes on the online section of the business. 

 

      What I found out was I was good at beads. I learned how to crimp and string and how to help people have confidence in their work. I found a community of jewelry artists that made me want to learn and share more. I started making my own pieces, collecting beads, and teaching classes.  It was awesome! But I found that unless I put my items for dirt cheap, things didn't sell. Then one day, our boss took a slight piece of wire and a hammer and made a hook for a clasp and I was hypnotized.  I was amazed at how the metal changed when it was hammered.  My coworker, Eunice, and I began to stir up metalworking in our souls.  

      One day Eunice showed me Harbor Freight and the heavens opened and the angels were singing hallelujah! Later I found a 15lb anvil and right then and there I sold my soul to metalworking!  (I am from the South, the bible belt, and I went to Catholic school for 9 years, so things come to me in religion.)  In 2007 I had my daughter and quit working at RocknRocks.  Things were slow while I learned the ways of poop and breastfeeding, but when she was old enough to take good naps I pulled out my box of wire and began to create again and this time, people loved it. 

My lovely anvil, letter stamps, and stubby ball pein hammer
I found at Harbor Freight

      I made small things at first, little wrapped pendants and things (my anvil came in 2008). And with the ever enduring encouragement of my mother and my family, I started making more and more until finally complete strangers were buying my pieces.  I would get asked all the time "Do you sell online?"  And the answer was "no" until 2010 when I tentatively made a shop on Etsy called The Salvaged Edge and started selling to people all over.  I have enjoyed a moderate success so far, for which I am thankful, but I am always looking to meet more people and expand my friends and customers. So, if you are in the area, stop by 

http://www.etsy.com/shop/MarieYoungdesigns

And remember, if you are a struggling artist who is starting online for the first time: Slow and steady wins the race, that and promoting your product like hell! 

      

What's love got to do with it?

This blog is intended to catologue my journey as an artist. Since I am nearing the end of my third decade I thought I would begin by cataloguing my journey to this point:
I've always been creative. I was the kid that hid the scissors and paper in my desk and made snowflakes or origami during class. I dug clay from my yard and made pots for my mother for mother's day. I even made a Cinderella coach for my Barbies from a real pumpkin (no mice though). In high school I was more interested in theatrics than in visual art and didn't take a single art class until my final semester of my senior year. My high school printmaking teacher, Mr. Damron, was a no nonsense guy who taught the processes and when I showed promise let me work individually on my own masonite printblock, which I consider my first real revelation in art, "Her." It is a gorgeously simple figure, half corkscrew curled white girl, half braided hair black girl. Each side of her face is simply smiling. The ribbons on each side of her head are blowing gently in a breeze. I think in my innocence I wanted this to be the way the world looked at color, like a child, seeing the beauty in each twinkling eye. Years later I would enter a print of "Her" in the local art show, Rivers and Spires, and take first place in amateur mixed media.
There were other prints besides "Her;" "B is for Banana", which was childlike and simple, and "The Crow in the tree". I try to keep my ideas and art as simple as I can, because I think beauty is best that way. One of my favorites which I traded for another work to a local doctor was a thumbprint painting of a an oiled black man. The contrast between the dark skin and brightness of the reflecting light is peaceful and powerful. I'm not sure I actually titled that particular one.
In 1997 I started working at a local estate and ecclectic jewelry store. My boss, who was also the owner was a firecracker of a woman who either loves or despises things. When we wrapped gifts for the customers we weren't allowed to use tape. She had tissue paper, embossed aluminum foils, twist tie ribbon and regular ribbon, but the rule stood, no tape. This was a fabulous challenge for me and I soon was wrapping packages as tiny sculpures that would keep people coming back each year just for the wrapping. I made an entire Swan Princess ballet cast for one of my favorite customers, hearts for valentines day, packages that looked like bugs, butterflies, and swiss army knives, you name it and I would make it and send people home with instructions as to how to get the real present out so that they could still keep the "sculpture".
Along with the packages came the windows. I had never dressed a window, but my bosslady was sure I could do it and gave me free reign to be as creative as I could be. My friend and I made a four foot human heart for Valentine's Day, a crucified chic for which we recieved hate mail for Easter in order to protest the wholesale slaughter of the baby animals that get sold and ultimately die just so parents can give their child a fuzzy chic for Easter. Father's Day was a giant sperm and egg. Mothers day was a pregnant woman. Summer's window was an underwater scene with a shark hanging from the ceiling heading toward an innertube and a pair of legs dangling. For the millenium we had a huge four foot "computer bug" eating at a computer screen, which I'm told is hanging in someone's house. It was an adventure to be at her shop and be able to create anything that I wanted. She gave me a phrase and told me to run with it. I had never had so much freedom, but it couldn't last forever.