My love of rocks started out as a hobby. There is often a fear that when you take a hobby and make it a career you will lose the passion for it and all the fun will be gone. But by making it into a career I found a whole new reason to love creating with wire, crystals and rocks.
Metamorphic Spirit started years ago with one family tree. I wanted to show a friend how much I appreciated her. Family is so very important to her, so I made her a family tree….
I have always used my artwork to express my feelings of love, appreciation and gratitude towards others. I take so much joy in helping others do the same.
I make a lot of custom family trees because I love helping people celebrate the relationships that mean the most to them. I have also helped celebrate new love with wedding trees as well as anniversaries with anniversary trees. Just this week I delivered an anniversary tree to a man who was excited to have found the perfect gift for his wife. I loved the excitement he had about the gift and the anticipation he had about giving it to her. That encounter made me think about all the special moments like that I have had as part of my career as an artist.
In all my work I am inspired by the beauty of nature and see my art as a way to celebrate that beauty.
By creating family trees, I have had Joy of being in on a surprise and helping a spouse find the perfect gift for their partner, and a child find a perfect gift for an aging parent.
I have had the honor of creating coordinating necklaces for a woman and her terminally ill mother so they could feel connected when they were apart. That same woman later told me how the necklace helped her feel close to her mother after she passed away.
I have made Memorial trees to help ease the pain of loss of loved ones.
I have seen a woman, who has never seen herself as deserving the best, treat herself to a gift that reminds her, she is beautiful, and she does deserve happiness.
I was recently turned down when I applied to be in a craft fair. This is what they said
“After talking with the leaders of the church they Feel that your merchandise does not align with the church’s morals.”
It is their craft fair, so they have the right to decide who they allow in and who they do not. I agree that it seems I don’t have the same religious beliefs as this organization. But they didn’t say “beliefs”. They said “morals”. They did not say I was not moral. They directed it at my merchandise (my artwork). But as an artist, I feel my work and I are interconnected. When my work is attacked, my very core is being attacked. Beliefs are more abstract; they exist in the realm of thought, often group thought. Morals imply actions or behavior and have a much more personal connotation – implying, subconsciously, that someone is guilty of some sort of negative action. (I doubt the person who wrote that to me thought this deeply about it, but I have a Master of Psychology of culture – so it is impossible for me to not deconstruct such words).
In the examples I gave earlier in this blog I was celebrating, life, love, family, beauty, nature, individuality, marriage, commitment and even honoring people’s beliefs in heaven and the existence of God. These are my actions – I don’t need anyone to tell me if my actions are moral or not because I know where my heart is when I create my artwork. I also use my “immoral merchandise” to donate to many local and international causes, such as animal rescue, school band programs and research for chronic illnesses.
I love what I do. I am proud of what I do, I stand by what I do, what I believe, and my “morals”. If this organization sees my desire to spread joy, beauty, light, love and happiness as wrong, then I am eternally grateful that they decided I was not “moral enough” for their event.
This is not a call to condemn the organization who wrote this message to me. I don’t even know the names of the people behind it. I have never spoken to them before (I filled out a vendor application for a Christmas Craft Fair). Their message, while not intended to do so, made me stop and think about the good that my artwork does for people and how that raises my vibration as well as theirs. It made me even more secure in the knowledge that this crazy idea I had to give up a steady wage and be an artist is the right thing to do. I encourage all of you to stop from time to time to examine your life and ask yourself if you are doing things that bring you joy. The more secure I am with myself and my decisions, the less I need validation for outside sources and the more I feel sorry for people who view others with such a closed mind.
This incident was also a good reminder to be conscious of where we shop. The energy that goes into handmade items is what makes them special. I put so much love into everything I make, and I know of many other artists who do as well. Support the artists in your community and shop at craft fairs who support artisans as well and craft sales that raise money for causes you believe in. One craft fair I will be taking part in is the Brooks Toy Library Christmas Craft Fair. I love what they do for the community and am grateful for all they did for me when my children were young. If you are local, I hope to see you there.