Artist Interview: Bird From a Wire

Name: Jennifer Swift

Name of Business: Bird from a Wire

Creative Influences: Nature, line, color and pattern.

Preferred Medium of Creativity: I love combining wire and fabric to create my stitched wire sculptures.

Brief Bio:

Jen Swift is an at home mother and artist from Plymouth, MN. She loves to play, experiment, and just enjoy the process of art. She began creating her wire and fabric sculptures after her son was born and has taken the idea and turned it into her etsy business, and publishing. She has been featured in multiple issues of Sew Somerset, and Somerset Home, and has just had a book published. The book, Creative Bloom: Projects and Inspiration with Wire and Fabric (North Light, 2010) along with her blog, Art as Usual, allow her to encourage and inspire others to lead a creative life.

Links:

www.birdfromawire.etsy.com

http://blog.birdfromawire.com 

 What is one of your earliest creative memories?

My mother was a teacher so my brother and I would spend hours after school each day as she finished up her grading and prepwork. I remember filling a huge chalkboard with elaborate drawings of princess dresses and of cloud cities (inspired by star wars). I loved the ability to draw lots and draw big. My mother says the drawings were always very detailed. I still like to draw big, but I enjoy my detail work too. The wire uses the same big movements to sculpt as my drawing and the stitching I add allows me to calm down and focus in on details.

Did your creative habits make a smooth transition into your adult life?  What did the evolution look like? 

Actually I had a lot of starts and stops with a ton of teenage angst thrown in. I drew from the time I was little and as I grew my drawings would evolve. First the princess dresses, then landscapes, then mountains, waterfalls, and trees, all the while they became more and more detailed. When I had hard things happen, or something about life confused me I would go back to those same inspirations; mountains, waterfalls, and trees. I processed everything through my art and things would make sense for a little while. I also thought of my ability to create art as something that was unique to me and helped me get through the horrible self- hating teenage years. Then when I got a job after college I used my art skills daily to design flowers but didn’t have the energy to create at home too.

If you had a creative hiatus, what event/circumstance brought you back to your creative lifestyle? 

When my son was born I went into a big depression and both my mom and my husband encouraged me to do art again. I felt God answered my “what do I do now?” prayer by handing me the wire and fabric.

 How has GOD been a part of your creative process/lifestyle? 

I see the Holy Spirit as whispering in my ear. All the creative choices I make from what color to use, to what I paint or sculpt are inspired and I truly feel that inspiration comes from God. I tried creating from me and I felt empty, I need God to fill me. He does that through my time with nature, through my love of flowers, trips to the quilt store, or the quiet times when I sketch.

 CLICK HERE to purchase the e-book of this Interview series for $4.99

That Time Alone is Essential to Your Creative Spirit

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“Be ruthless about protecting writing days, i.e., do not cave in to endless requests to have "essential" and "long overdue" meetings on those days. The funny thing is that, although writing has been my actual job for several years now, I still seem to have to fight for time in which to do it. Some people do not seem to grasp that I still have to sit down in peace and write the books, apparently believing that they pop up like mushrooms without my connivance. I must therefore guard the time allotted to writing as a Hungarian Horntail guards its firstborn egg.”
― J.K. Rowling

Artist Spotlight: Amy Lee Weeks

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AMY LEE'S SHOP

FAN PAGE

Artist Interview: Jodene Shaw

Jodene {Jodi} Shaw
Business:  Jodene Shaw Mixed Media Art & Photography
Creative Influences:  Kelly Rae Roberts, Shona Cole, Beth Moore, John & Stasi Eldredge, Dan Allender, Carrie Todd, Ansel Adams
Preferred Medium of Creativity:  Photography, mixed media, writing/journaling, speaking to women and girls…{weaving all of it together for their hearts}

Bio:  I live on a family cattle ranch in western South Dakota with my handsome husband Jim and three unique kids son Tom (11) and daughters Sydney (9) and Erin (4).  My husband’s great-grandfather came from Ireland and homesteaded here over 100 years ago. {It is still a rural area—we live 60 miles from the nearest bank, grocery store, doctor and 90 miles from Starbucks and Walmart.}  Bird watching was shared with me by my Grandma Marj as a young girl and continues to be something I delight in.  I enjoy reading and watching movies with my family, as well as history and museums.  My creative journey as an adult is relatively new.  I have really only been sharing my writing, photography and art within the past year.  I work from home.  My “studio” is my kitchen table and counter.

Links:  http://www.jodeneshaw.blogspot.com

          http://www.etsy.com/jodeneshaw

  

 
Earliest creative memory/Finding creative voice

As early as I could remember, I had crayons, paints, paper, scissors, markers – art supplies.  I believe that is where I discovered that I could indeed create and that I enjoyed it.  I believe so much in having those simple tools available to children as early as possible so that they can begin to express themselves and communicate.  At home or at grandparents’ homes, I remember creating.  I was fascinated by maps and flags of other countries, patterns, rainbows, color.

My creative habits moved into my adult life through scrapbooking.  Documenting milestones, celebrations, vacations, moments of beauty—that was important to me to remember.  The photography and working with paper and colors was my creative outlet, and I viewed it as “my time”.  I developed a habit of Sunday afternoon scrapping while my husband watched NASCAR and my kids took their naps when they were little.

 In 2006-07, we were expecting our third child.  I had struggled with depression off and on for several years.  I struggled spiritually, emotionally, financially.  The roots of my struggle ran deep back into my early teen years of searching for security, identity and validity.  For those teen years, I seemed able to lean heavily on academic and social success for those three foundation layers of security, identity, and validity.  As an adult, I rolled that over into seeking that foundation through a career that I thought was the only way to get what I thought I was looking for to find happiness-joy-success-security-identity-validity.  

My struggle {as each person’s life struggles are} was complex.  To state it in a paragraph would be to oversimplify it.  But here goes my attempt:  seeking security, identity and validity as a person through a career and the image it would bring—always on a mission to prove myself to others and especially to me—began to erode all that I was seeking from the inside out.  My foundation that I tried to build on my own, putting up a false front, and a smile and a mask, crumbled on a day in January 2007.  I was broken, raw, exposed before my husband, and I knew I must live a new way.  I did not know exactly how, but I knew that it would be different.  

As the mask of what I now know was pride, began to crumble, I began to discover more and more of my true self.   And so began a wrestling period with God to find the courage to be who He really made me to be and let go of painting a perfect picture image of my life for others to applaud or admire.  I felt like I had lived my life as a resume—always trying to prove that I had value and worth, and I was exhausted from it, tired of living that way.  Ready to walk in truth, be who I really was, be real, and find joy in my everyday.

The Transition 

God has been at the very heart of my creative process and lifestyle.  The change began on that day back in 2007 with the crumbling of my pride which had been like a suffocating skin on the outside of me.  At last I was beginning to break free of it.  My Bible study group began a DVD and workbook series: How To Hear God’s Voice by Mark & Patti Virkler.  I was hesitant to start it—wondering if trying to hear God’s voice was ok, or if it would be like fortune telling.  My hesitation soon melted as I began to hear the Lord care for my heart and lead me into His truth as never before.  I was truly able to hear him heal me with words that poured out into journal after journal after journal.  My Wonderful Counselor, the Holy Spirit, poured truth into the places that I had believed lies about where I would find my security, identity and validity—and joy.  I found a firm foundation in a real, vibrant, alive relationship with God.  As I read the Bible, the words seemed to come off the page and right into my life.  I understood and saw with new eyes as I read.  Music spoke to my heart constantly.  There was a newness to my life.  I was beginning to understand how misled I was, and how the Lord was the source of what I was seeking:  security, identity, validity.  In Him, I am all that I ever need to be or can be, and am more than I ever can be on my own.

My creativity began in this season through writing.  My shelves are lined with journals in which words seemed to flow constantly.  I remember having a journal with me even in the bathroom because thoughts would come while I was in the shower, and I’d grab a pen and start writing again wrapped in a towel before I was even dry.  In addition to writing, I started carrying my camera and found the super-macro setting.

Our third child Erin was born in March 2007, and it seemed that I was new right along with her.  As I watched her see things for the first time, I entered in with her, entered in the wonder and fascination of my everyday life:  the trees, the wind, the snow, the flowers, water . . . 

 

As Erin looked at the world, I looked through my super-macro setting on my camera, finding that I was moved to worship the Creator of such beauty.  In the simplicity, I found richness, life, worship.  

 CLICK HERE to purchase the e-book of this Interview series for $4.99

Joy and Peace

One of new favorite daily spaces to visit is called Roots of She. The fabulous group over there shared this lovely video about a months ago and I can't get the song out of my head.

Keep Moving Toward What You Are Really meant to Do

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What we really want to do is what we are really meant to do.  When we do what we are meant to do, money comes to us, doors open for us, we feel useful, and the work we do feels like play to us.

-Julia Cameron

Artist Spotlight: Bebe and Alice

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