Recently I was in a creative funk. Sales were down and so was my morale. I had a choice; give up or change it up.
Another creative friend of mine recommended a movie that I hadn't seen, it came out in 2019 I think, and I'm surprised this got past me. Where'd You Go Bernadette? The humorous and enlightening story of a highly creative woman who hadn't been creating and was slowly driving herself mad. Hmm, any correlations I wondered??
This got me to thinking about my own creative journey, of course, and it wasn't hard to understand the message that we Must create if we are creative people, driven by design, vision, innovation. Whatever the medium is (and you may have several like I do), it's just part of our DNA, our soul, our reason for existence.
You may be thinking my next paragraph would involve a fairy tale account of selling my home and moving to Italy (not that it hasn't occurred to me) but it was much more down to earth than that. After a few days of self reflection (and my 67th birthday!) I decided to just change the direction of my jewelry medium. While I Love the art and craft of foldform, it has lost it's appeal, or gone out of fashion, at least for now. Oh I will still make and use this method, but my first directional shift is to use what I have all around me.
I live in the Olympic Mountains of the Pacific Northwest, home to rich natural resources, beautiful scenery, lush rain forests and more rivers, lakes and wild coastline than you have time to visit. I thought, why not focus on this as my theme?
My new work will reflect the diversity of environments here; fish, birds, trees, mountains, etc. While I do plan to design and manufacture my own charms and supplies within this theme at some point, I do have access to a plethora of supplies that will get me through.
All of the adorable wildlife creatures are available in charms and pendants, PNW themed jewelry will be my goal. I can still create with metal around this theme.
My new business name is now Olympic Jewelry Studio (formerly J Gray Design). You'll see this in my Etsy shop and on Instagram.
I feel good about this direction. It feels right.
I highly encourage you to examine your lows and see where you need a change before you give up.
As always, thank you for reading this blog.
Hi Jeni, thanks for sharing your story. I've just put the movie on hold at the library. I'm happy it was the impetus to move in a new direction with your jewelry. I still don't know how you came up with the name "Olympic." How did that come about? What does it mean to you? I look forward to seeing your new designs.
ReplyDeleteHi Mary! Thank you for your questions, you have brought to my attention an element I forgot and I have edited the blog. In short, I live in the Olympic Mountains of the Pacific Northwest, thus the name choice.
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