Sustaining Craft - Episodes Tagged with “Arkansas”

Episode 33: Aaron Walker: Loving People Through Tattoos

Elizabeth Silverstein — Tue, 05 Sep 2023 13:00:00 -0400

This episode is built around Aaron giving me a tattoo while I interview him. Check out the interview on YouTube to get the full experience. For this episode, you'll hear the tattoo gun in the background, humming away. YouTube: https://youtu.be/qslGcx8uHmQ.

Aaron Walker is a professional tattoo artist with a private studio in downtown Little Rock. He specializes in color tattoos, particularly watercolor.

"Whenever I first started tattooing, I did a lot of color tattoos in general. I wanted to do a style called New School, which is very cartoony, almost based off of graffiti. And, I still love that style. It's a lot of fun to tattoo. But I got asked to do a couple of watercolor tattoos. And I had a lot of fun doing them. I was probably in like my first few years of tattooing and then one day I thought to myself that I had a lot of fun doing them and just wanted to keep doing them, so I told myself that some styles aren't for everybody and there should always be somebody that wants to be good at certain styles. Like for example, there's people that started doing tribal in the 90s, and they still to this day do it. I just started thinking to myself my style isn't for everybody, and that's completely fine. I necessarily don't want to be a black and gray artist. Or, you know, any other kind of style. You could name any style, really. But, while I can do black and gray, it's not what I want to specialize in. There's people out there that definitely can do watercolor, but it's probably not what they want to do every day either, so, you might as well have somebody that's gonna want to do it and try their best to be really great at it, and that's what I sought out to do." - Aaron Walker

Watch Aaron give me the tattoo on YouTube Here: https://youtu.be/qslGcx8uHmQ

Find out more about Aaron:
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/aaronwalkertattoos/
Website - https://www.instagram.com/aaronwalkertattoos/

Find out more about Elizabeth and Sustaining Craft:
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/sustainingcraft/
Facebook - http://facebook.com/sustainingcraft
Website - https://www.sustainingcraft.com

Special Guest: Aaron Walker.

Episode 32: Katy Raines, Part 2: Relearning How To Love Art

Elizabeth Silverstein — Wed, 09 Aug 2023 00:00:00 -0400

Katy Raines, a Little Rock creative, joins Elizabeth again on the Sustaining Craft podcast for the second time since 2018 to reveal her work with the 2nd Friday Art Night After Hours Market, how she's relearned to love art, and why she joined an all-girls Dungeons and Dragons campaign.

"I don’t need to do an all-day eight hour event where I actually get up at 6 am to prep and then get there at 7 and the event starts at 9 and then I stay until 5 and tear down at 6. It’s hit or miss if I’m going to make fifty bucks or three hundred bucks. Is that worth my energy? At this point, not really. I do still have a full-time job so I’m grateful that I’m able to be more selective about my freelance and these vendor events. And with that, like I said, I’m not posting as much on instagram about my personal art because I’m relearning how to love art. I feel like I had to take that step back. Because it was, everything needed to be, how many likes did I get, or who is sharing it? I saw my friend share somebody else’s art but they didn’t share my art. And it was becoming a shitty comparison game that nobody wants. I love all of my friends’ art and I’m like, they should be sharing because they’re amazing. It was never a, ‘I feel in competition with them’, it was just a ‘I’m being behind’ feeling. With that, I think it was, I am putting too much pressure on myself. And I think it goes back to the pandemic. I took that two years to really relearn who I was. And part of that was, what did I like about being an artist as a kid? That was: sitting in my room, listening to music and figure drawing." - Katy Raines

Listen to her previous episode here: https://sustainingcraft.fireside.fm/13
Read here: https://hewandweld.com/katy-raines/

Join Katy and a group of talented artists this Friday, August 11, for the last Second Friday Art Night Afterhours of the year. To apply for next year’s events, email the Downtown Little Rock Partnership at downtownpartnership@downtownlr.com or Katy at WhatTheKaty@Gmail.Com.

Find out more about Katy:
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/whatthekaty
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/whatthekaty
2nd Friday Art Night - https://www.facebook.com/2ndFridayArtNight
After Hours - https://www.facebook.com/events/740123451446905/740123454780238/?acontext=%7B%22event_action_history%22%3A%5B%7B%22surface%22%3A%22home%22%7D%2C%7B%22mechanism%22%3A%22search_results%22%2C%22surface%22%3A%22search%22%7D%5D%2C%22ref_notif_type%22%3Anull%7D

Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/sustainingcraft/
Facebook - http://facebook.com/sustainingcraft
Website - https://www.sustainingcraft.com

Special Guest: Katy Raines.

Episode 31: Robert Bean, Part 3: Giving the Work Space

Elizabeth Silverstein — Fri, 14 Apr 2023 14:00:00 -0400

Robert Bean, a Little Rock visual storyteller, is back on the Sustaining Craft podcast for the third time to share what he's been up to, how to gain separation from your art in a healthy way and get feedback, along with how it's impossible to have expression without practice.

"Give the work space. I think part of the problem we have is that if you're stuck in a drawing; you're stuck in a piece you're making, you're often very involved in that peice and sometimes you're very emotionally invested in that piece, too. One of the things I think that helps is putting that piece away for awhile. That while may be a couple of days. That may be a couple of weeks. ... Put it away where you can't see it, so you stop thinking about it as much and it's not always there, consciously bothering you. After that, then pull it out, reasses it yourself, and then get someone to look at it. Because you've given yourself some space. There's a preciousness that comes with making. Right at the moment of making is when it's the most precious. ... If you can give it some space and distance, it doesn't have that kind of impact. It may not hit you as hard. The easiest thing is give it a little bit of breathing room and then come back to it." - Robert Bean

Robert Bean Episode 1: https://sustainingcraft.fireside.fm/15
Robert Bean Article 1: https://hewandweld.com/robert-bean/
Robert Bean Episode 2: https://sustainingcraft.fireside.fm/27
Robert Bean Article 2: https://hewandweld.com/robert-bean-parttwo/

Find out more about Robert:
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/rbfineart/
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/RPBean
Classes - https://www.rbfineart.com/classes
Newsletter - https://www.rbfineart.com/contact-us

Brandy Mimm's Listen with Your Eyes Dance Troupe - Resurgence Tickets for April 22, 2023: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/listen-with-your-eyes-dance-troupe-resurgence-tickets-509749684027?mibextid=Zxz2cZ.

Sustaining Craft provides storytelling resources and shares the tales of those pursuing their art or craft. There are no fees for artists and craftspeople to participate. Music provided by Jim Ciago (Seven Second Chance on iTunes and Spotify & Nomad Neighbors in the Denver area most weekends).
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/sustainingcraft/
Facebook - http://facebook.com/sustainingcraft
Website - https://www.sustainingcraft.com

Special Guest: Robert Bean.

Episode 28: Liz Taylor-McMullen: Creating Smiles With Community Music

Elizabeth Silverstein — Thu, 21 May 2020 00:00:00 -0400

Liz Taylor-McMullen earned her bachelor’s in music education and a master’s in music performance before working for two years as a band director. She’d had to learn quite a few different instruments to teach band. “I was studying to be a band director, and when you do that, you learn how to play all of the band instruments to a certain level of proficiency, because you had to be able to get sixth graders started.”

As the band director, a lot of people in a state like Arkansas are often the only music director for an entire school district at times and can be responsible for up to sixty students. “You have to be able to wear a lot of hats,” Liz said. “That’s why I can play a lot of instruments. Because I learned how to learn.”

She spent four years more as a choir director before moving into administration at the University of Central Arkansas (UCA). “I think I just always knew that I wanted to be a music teacher from the time I was a little girl,” Liz shared. “It just seemed like the natural thing to do. It never really crossed my mind to have another job. And I got the job and I did the job. And once I got to the point where I felt comfortable and knew what I was doing … It was three things. It was the red tape, it was dealing with parents who didn’t appreciate what I was doing and couldn’t see that I was trying really hard, and just feeling like I wasn’t making much of a difference. It wore me down.”

Find Lieder Vox Duo on Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/Lieder-Vox-Duo-102621477815115/

Read the rest: https://hewandweld.com/news/

Sustaining Craft is a passion project of Hew & Weld Writing. There are no fees for artists and craftspeople to participate. Music provided by Jim Ciago (Seven Second Chance on iTunes and Spotify & Nomad Neighbors in the Denver area most weekends).
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/sustainingcraft/
Facebook - http://facebook.com/sustainingcraft

Find more from Hew & Weld:
Website - https://www.hewandweld.com/news
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/hewandweld/
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/hewandweld/

Special Guest: Liz Taylor-McMullen.

Episode 27: Robert Bean, Part 2: Investigating People Through Visual Arts

Elizabeth Silverstein — Fri, 01 May 2020 13:00:00 -0400

Robert Bean has noticed how the rest of the world has realized how much they need the arts. “All of a sudden, they’re starting to draw, play music,” Robert said. “I’ve seen the stuff that says, ‘You don’t support the arts? What are you doing right now? You’re reading books. You’re coloring. You’re doing all of these things.’ And I’m 100% behind that. We should be funding and supporting the arts, not letting them go or devaluing them.”

Creatives haven’t been stopped by the limitations of social distancing, either, like Thao & The Get Down Stay Down, which used Zoom, a business tool, to create a music video for their song, Phenom, by pivoting in a matter of weeks. “To me, that’s the power of the arts and the creative brain,” Rober shared. “‘Okay, we get hit with this setback, but what do we do instead?’ It doesn’t just grind to a halt. They just go, ‘Okay. I’m gonna roll up my sleeves and I’m gonna figure out a different way to do this.’ And they get in there and do it. And I think that would benefit everyone so much more if we would fund and teach that kind of thing to everybody.”

Read the rest at: https://hewandweld.com/news/

Find out more about Robert:
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/rbfineart/
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/RPBean
Classes - https://www.arkansasartscenter.org/how-to-register

Find more from Hew & Weld:
Website - https://www.hewandweld.com/news
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/hewandweld/
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/hewandweld/

Special Guest: Robert Bean.

Episode 26: Chris Swasta: Hearing in 3D

Elizabeth Silverstein — Wed, 22 Apr 2020 16:00:00 -0400

In 2016, when he came back to Little Rock, he found a job at the Arkansas Repertory Theatre. “My old high school teacher was working with me and she was like, ‘Hey, I’ve been following you throughout your college years. I know you started doing pottery. Have you heard about the art center?’ And I was like, ‘No, what is that?’ And so I went there the next day.”

He signed up for classes with Kelly Edwards. “I walked into her class, and I wasn’t going to leave,” Chris shared. “I was going to make something before I left. That’s how it started, and I’ve been there ever since.”

Now, Chris teaches an afterschool program for students ranging in age from 10 to 18, and he’s a part of the work-study program at the center. And after hearing a Radiohead song, he made 6,000 pieces over the past six months, crediting his creative drive to synthesia. “Anything see, anything I hear, I visually relate it to a 3D form,” Chris explained. “This installation is inspired by a song.”

Read the rest at: https://hewandweld.com/news/

Find out more about Chris:
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/rollinghillspottery/
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/rollinghillspottery/

Find more from Hew & Weld:
Website - https://www.hewandweld.com/news
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/hewandweld/
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/hewandweld/

Special Guest: Chris Swasta.

Episode 24: Hannah Genevieve Lawrence: Weaving Functional Art

Elizabeth Silverstein — Fri, 27 Mar 2020 11:00:00 -0400

And then COVID-19 hit the United States. “A few weeks beforehand, my boss was telling me, ‘No one’s gonna, with all the stuff going on, no one’s gonna go to your show,’” Hannah said. “I was like, ‘It’s not gonna be a big deal. It’s gonna be fine.’”

Ultimately, the exhibition was postponed until February 2021. “Then it just all gets taken away,” Hannah said. “I taught a lot of extra classes to have money to buy art supplies. I missed out on things with friends to stay home and make stuff. One of my friends recently moved away, and one of the last dinners they had before they left, I didn’t go to because I was like, ‘I really need to stay home and make stuff. I’ve already been out too much this week.’ It makes me a little bit sad that I missed stuff like that.”

Read the rest at: https://hewandweld.com/news/

Find out more about Hannah:
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/hannah.genevieve/

Find more from Hew & Weld:
Website - https://www.hewandweld.com/news
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/hewandweld/
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/hewandweld/

Special Guest: Hannah Genevieve Lawrence.

Episode 23: Brandy Mimms: Listening with Your Eyes

Elizabeth Silverstein — Wed, 12 Feb 2020 18:00:00 -0500

Growing up in the hearing world, Brandy Mimms didn’t realize for years that there was an entire other community she could participate in. “I grew up mostly in the hearing world,” Brandy explained. “So we have the deaf world and we have the hearing world. I grew up in the hearing world because my family wanted me to be hearing so badly. I appreciate them, thank you, but they never really exposed me to the deaf world as a kid.”

Still, she followed her interests, which included music. To listen, she simply has to feel it. “I have to feel the vibration,” she explained. “I can hear it a little bit in my hearing aids, yes, and I’m not saying it has to be rocking loud, but it has to be loud enough for me to really feel it where I can feel, okay, this is hard or this is soft. I need to feel that. If I don’t feel it, I feel like, ah I’m lost. I don’t know where I’m going. I feel very crazy. That’s how I listen to music -- feeling the beat. And I have bluetooth hearing aids, so music is always in my ears when I’m not talking to people. I’m always listening to music. The vibration is right there. I have a love for music and music helps me with my dancing and helps me to express myself.”

Find more about Brandy:
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/uniquethedeafdancer/
Unique the Deaf Dance Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/Unique-The-Deaf-Dancer-304624890492835/?ref=br_rs
Listen With Your Eyes Dance Troupe Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/ListenWithYourEyesDanceTroupe/
Personal Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/brandy.mimms.35
Website - http://www.brandymimms.com/

Find more from Hew & Weld:
Website - https://www.hewandweld.com/news
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/hewandweld/
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/hewandweld/

Special Guest: Brandy Mimms.

Episode 20: Hannah Allen: Putting Petal to the Metal

Elizabeth Silverstein — Fri, 29 Nov 2019 11:00:00 -0500

Hannah Allen stumbled into the flower industry with a customer service job. “I had no intention of touching flowers whatsoever,” Hannah said. “Only because my manager was just like, ‘This is your job. Don’t expect much.’ I was like, ‘Yeah, sure, fine.’ I was young and dumb, so I was like, ‘I’ll just do whatever. Just give me a paycheck.’”

Then the head florist, Marie, asked her for some help. “She got really overwhelmed one day and she was like, ‘Come on over,’” Hannah said. “She was drilling me on the flowers, on what’s what, I had to label them. She taught me all the basic arrangements that I needed to know.”

Marie was transferred, and Hannah became head designer at the shop.

She’d always loved weddings since she was young. As the flower girl at the weddings of her mother’s friends, Hannah was determined to do the best job she could. When a bride came into the shop looking for affordable wedding flowers, Hannah remembered how much she loved weddings. “A girl came in looking for cheap wedding flowers on the fly,” Hannah said. “My manager handed me this big binder full of wedding information on all the questions you need to ask and all this stuff. And he was like, ‘Here you go. You can do it.’ I was like ‘Oh, ok.’ Having that sit down with the bride and getting excited and talking about what we’re going to do for her wedding was what ignited that, I think. I had this entire trade-style crash course on how to have a wedding consultation. That’s where it started, I think. It was the wedding stuff.”

In 2018, when she decided to “go rogue” as she described it, she started with Hannah Allen, Flower Gal. Then came Petal to the Metal Floristry. “I was just making an Instagram post one day, and I was just like, ‘Everything is going so fast, it’s petal to the metal.’ It just clicked in my head. It was the best pun of all time for a flower business.”

Find more of Hannah's work:
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/petaltothemetalar/
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/petaltothemetalar/

Sustaining Craft is a project of Hew&Weld Writing. There are no fees for artists and craftspeople to participate. Everything is funded through partnerships with friends. Music provided by Jim Ciago (Seven Second Chance on iTunes and Spotify & Nomad Neighbors in the Denver area most weekends).
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/sustainingcraft/
Facebook - http://facebook.com/sustainingcraft

Find more from Hew&Weld:
Website - hewandweld.com/news
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/hewandweld/
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/hewandweld/

Special Guest: Hannah Allen Anderson.

Episode 19: Michael Eubanks: Using Art to Combat Fear

Elizabeth Silverstein — Wed, 06 Nov 2019 16:00:00 -0500

Michael joined the military at the age of 16. By the age of 31, with a three-month-old daughter, Michael was let go from the military in what the armed forces calls a reduction in strength. He was sent back to the United States with his family, with no understanding of life as a civilian for the past 15 years.

“I panic," Michael explained. "I experience a lot of stress. We were trained to not recognize stress. We didn’t talk about stress. We didn’t talk about trauma. So you’re outprocessed--in other words, you come through this process of coming back to what we call ‘the block.’ And I would say you try to hold your head up, you try to be proud. You try to be an adult. You try to play the male role but you are in a nether world. Even though you’re back with the family that birthed you and raised you, you’re back with a whole different mindset, a whole different paradigm of what life’s about, and you are disconnected. You suffer from disassocation disorder. You’re out of your element, your’re out of your sphere. You don’t know what to do.”

Michael graduated with honors from the UA Little Rock Masters Social Work program with a concentration on community and family therapy. He works as an education specialist in a program at UA Little Rock with an office from the Department of Education. He also plays once a month in Hot Springs and performs several times a month for veterans with dementia, VA staff, and veterans in the day health care program.

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Find more of Michael's work:
Website - www.michael-eubanks.com
Email - meubanks@michael-eubanks.com
Arkansas Arts Council Directory - https://www.arkansasarts.org/aie-artists/michael-eubanks
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/michael.eubanks.315
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-e-eubanks-71800043/

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Sustaining Craft is a project of Hew&Weld Writing. There are no fees for artists and craftspeople to participate. Each episode is only possible with the help of friends: Jim Ciago (Seven Second Chance on iTunes and Spotify & Nomad Neighbors in the Denver area most weekends) and Joshua Kurtz.

Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/sustainingcraft

Find more from Hew&Weld:
Each episode of Sustaining Craft comes with a companion article - hewandweld.com/news
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/hewandweld/
Facebook Group - https://www.facebook.com/groups/1355556997945302/
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/hewandweld/
Podcast Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/sustainingcraft/

Special Guest: Michael Eubanks.

Episode 18: Jessica and Justin Crum: Proving That Creative Careers Are Possible (But Difficult)

Elizabeth Silverstein — Tue, 03 Sep 2019 15:00:00 -0400

Jessica and Justin Crum decided to move to Conway in 2014, where Justin began working for PBS creating documentaries. He created educational documentaries, included one that aired nationally. But with little room to grow, he decided to take a step back into the scripts he’d written previously. “My roots are very much in narrative filmmaking,” Justin shared. “And I did grow to love documentaries there, I didn’t want to only do documentaries, and there’s no way to branch out from that there with PBS, really, unless you’re Downton Abbey. I just felt it was the right time to move into other scripts I had written before and start producing those. PBS was a bit of a training ground for me in a lot of ways and built my confidence up. I left there with the intention of making the film I’m making now, which is Papaw Land. I’ve been working on that for a year and a half. And it’ll probably be another year or so. It’s a long process.”

And Jessica tried to continue her career as a fashion designer. She was freelancing for her contacts in LA and started saying yes to other projects. “When people locally would say, ‘What do you do?’ I would say I’m a designer,” Jessica explained. “I would tell them textile design, fabric design, graphic t-shirts, and they’d go, ‘Oh! Could you make my logo?’ I was like, ‘Probably.’ I’m a yes person, so I was like, ‘Yes, of course I can,’ and then secretly I was like, ‘I’ll figure it out.’”

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Find more of Jessica's work:
Silverlake Studio Website - https://silverlakestudio.com
Silverlake Studio Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/teamsilverlake/
Silverlake Studio Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/teamsilverlake
The Studio Downtown Website - https://www.thestudiodowntown.com/
The Studio Downtown Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/thestudiodowntown/
The Studio Downtown Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/thestudiodowntown

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Find more of Justin's work:
Papaw Land Movie Website - https://papawlandmovie.com/
Papaw Land Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/papawlandmovie/
Papaw Land Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/papawlandmovie
Papaw Land Twitter - https://twitter.com/papawlandmovie
Papaw Land Land Kickstarter - https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1546893063/papaw-land-movie-filming-in-arkansas-summer-2018

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Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/sustainingcraft

Find more from Hew&Weld:
Each episode of Sustaining Craft comes with a companion article - hewandweld.com/news
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/hewandweld/
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/hewandweld/
Podcast Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/sustainingcraft/

Special Guests: Jessica Crum and Justin Crum.

Episode 17: Matthew Castellano: Building Community Through Art

Elizabeth Silverstein — Wed, 27 Feb 2019 16:00:00 -0500

When the gallery was in danger of closing, Castellano decided he would take on the project. He started raising money and planning pop-ups, absorbing the risk. “I didn't want to bring anybody else down,” he shared. “I wanted to do it pretty much on my own back. I did the GoFundMe for it and I had a lot better response than I thought I've ever had. So I have to do it now. Yeah, it's like yes, okay, I get to do it and have to do it. … It's really the community.”

He’s also built an educational element into the gallery, sharing the smaller details of working with galleries, like making sure a name is on the back of every art piece, resumes and portfolios are up-to-date, and that every “no” hits hard, but each “yes” makes up for it. “I've been rejected more times than I've been accepted but I was accepted a few times and that makes all the difference,” he said. “I want to be the person that I didn't have.”

Each artist accepted into Gallery 360 walks away learning how to work with other galleries as well. “Everyone that gets to show here is going to learn how to be an artist by the end of their show,” Castellano said. “That way, they are stronger about going into other places and being represented. A lot of times, gallerists and people that represent don't want to have to deal with people that don't know. It's a lot of work on their end. if they come in and they're completely perfect, then they have nothing but good roads ahead of them. So even the smallest things like not putting information on the back of the piece is detrimental sometimes because you never know if that could be a sale or if you're never gonna see that piece again because it can get lost.”

Find more of Matthew's work:
Art Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/matthewcastellanoart/
Gallery Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/lr_360/
Gallery Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/360Gallery/
Website - https://manvswheel.bigcartel.com/
GoFundMe - https://www.gofundme.com/gallery360
Ultraviolet - https://www.facebook.com/events/824094007942154/

Sustaining Craft is a project of Hew&Weld Writing. There are no fees for artists and craftspeople to participate. Everything is funded through Hew&Weld and partnerships with friends: Jim Ciago (Seven Second Chance on iTunes and Spotify & Nomad Neighbors in the Denver area most weekends) and Local. Magazine (http://localmag411.com/).

Find more from Hew&Weld:

Each episode of Sustaining Craft comes with a companion article, which can be found at hewandweld.com/news.
Instagram, Facebook, Twitter: @hewandweld
Sustaining Craft is also on Instagram: @sustainingcraft

Special Guest: Matthew Castellano.

Episode 16: Kathryn LeMaster: Using the Unseen to Craft a Home

Elizabeth Silverstein — Mon, 21 Jan 2019 13:00:00 -0500

And that interest had started years ago, with a family project. LeMaster’s father, gifted in construction, decided to build their family home from the ground up. The family lived in a mobile home while they first built a barn to house all of the building materials, and then started on the house a few years later. “I kind of felt like i grew up on a construction site,” LeMaster said.” I loved so much of that process of building our house and being able to be so involved in that process. Hanging doors, helping my mom pick out wall paper and paint colors.”

After graduating with her degree and working for a year and a half at a local firm as an intern and then a junior designer, LeMaster decided to take a break. She joined her mother again, helping her flip a house as LeMaster considered what her next step might be.

She didn’t intend to start a company.

Get more of Kathryn's work:
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/kjlemaster/
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/kathrynjlemaster/
Twitter - https://twitter.com/kjlemaster/
Website - https://kathrynjlemaster.com/

Find more from Hew&Weld:

Each episode of Sustaining Craft comes with a companion article, which can be found at hewandweld.com/news.
Instagram, Facebook, Twitter: @hewandweld
Sustaining Craft is also on Instagram: @sustainingcraft

Special Guest: Kathryn LeMaster.

Episode 12: Katie Childs: Problem Solving with Photographs

Elizabeth Silverstein — Wed, 10 Oct 2018 12:00:00 -0400

Now, Katie Childs photographs over 30 weddings a year, along with family portraits. In 2018, she booked 35 weddings, but hopes to reduce to 20 yearly. That may prove challenging--she’s already booked 14 weddings for 2019. Childs also started working with the Arkansas Times this year, traveling to farms for Food and Farm, and working on family-based shoots for Savvy. Savvy has brought projects that have been familiar due to her previous work, while Food and Farm offers opportunities to learn additional photography skills. “We’ll do the farmer’s portraits and try to pull a story from their farm and situation,” Childs explained. “With the cattle and corn, I’m just doing a documentary kind of style. A lot of the time, with these shoots, I don’t get to choose what time of day or what situation the cattle or the corn is going to be in. So it might be in the middle of the day. I’m trying to make the best use of whatever’s happening. And that is its own specific challenge, but I love figuring things out like that, it’s kind of my favorite thing. If it were super easy all the time, I don’t think I’d enjoy doing it. I like being thrown into a situation and having to figure it out.”

Special Guest: Katie Childs.

Episode 11: Geovanni Leiva: Roasting Romance Back into Coffee

Elizabeth Silverstein — Tue, 02 Oct 2018 16:00:00 -0400

Geovanni Leiva missed his family and his village, and then, after a visit five years ago, while flying back to Arkansas, he came up with an idea. “It was probably the worst three hours of my life because I would feel so defeated,” Leiva said. “And I would feel so helpless. … Why me? Why, out of all these people, I get to do this? Over one of those trips, I’m reading a magazine, and I have my little napkin for my Sprite, and I see a Chinese proverb in a magazine that says, if you give a man a fish, you will feed him for a day, but if you teach him how to fish, you will feed him for a lifetime. And I realized that exactly had happened to me. I had been given that opportunity. I had been given that chance to-- not only I was fed for one day, but I was actually given that opportunity. I realized, that’s exactly what I gotta do in my village. What if? And it started with that. Why if, why not? Why do I not bring their coffee, they grow coffee already. That’s what’s they’ve been doing for 60-plus years, ever since I’ve known them. What if I can get their coffee in the hands of my friends and family in the states? And then all of a sudden, I bridge the two, and while bridging the two, we break poverty? I was like, that’s it.”

Want the full article? Head on over to www.hewandweld.com for more.

Special Guest: Geovanni Leiva.

Episode 10: Diane Harper: Exposing Boogeymen with Ink Blots

Elizabeth Silverstein — Wed, 26 Sep 2018 22:00:00 -0400

Harper’s parents met while her father, Hal, was stationed overseas--her mother was French. They became a military family, with Harper the middle child of three. “I was a sick kid a lot and I grew up overseas in the military,” said Harper. “Just past toddler age in Berlin, when the Berlin wall was up, and things were pretty heated for the Cold War at the time. And I think my boogeyman was born in Berlin. Everything had barbed wire. There were armed guards everywhere, and so it was just kind of a terrifying place through a five-year-old’s eyes, but you don’t really have the vocabulary to deal with that. And then to be a sick kid in a military hospital with mostly adults around you, not a children’s hospital. It was kind of an unfriendly place. And there were noises at night and things like that, and my father was a police officer. so I knew there was danger and boogeyman out there but I didn’t have a vocabulary for it, so even as an adult I have a hard time coming up with that vocabulary, but I don’t have a hard time coming up with a visual vocabulary to describe it. And by allowing them to come to surface from my subconscious, it kind of allows me to embrace them in a different way as an adult and kind of be playful with them and be grateful that I had such a vivid imagination from the way we lived and grew up. I lived in the heart of fairy tales. We traveled in Bavaria and the Black Forest was around there, and the birthplace of Hansel and Gretel. And all of these kinds of bizarre folktales that we grew up with that were basically cautionary tales to children to mind their moms, but it was kind of a wonderful place.”

There are a few ways to find Diane's art in person: she'll be at Art on the Creeks in Rogers, Arkansas on Sept. 29; she'll have some work in the Fiber Arts Show on Nov. 2, and at the Gallery 26 Holiday Show. She also has a booth at South Main Creative.

Special Guest: Diane Harper.

Episode 9: Donnie Ferneau: Building Relationships with Local Food

Elizabeth Silverstein — Wed, 19 Sep 2018 14:00:00 -0400

Ferneau is quick to point out that he has a good team. His method of management lines up with his own personal philosophy -- being able to learn from mistakes and move forward. “Competition is natural, and you always want to be the best, but I guess you have to be beaten down a bit or be born a little bit wiser to be able to take a step back and look at your failures, rather then brush them under the rug and say they never happened,” Ferneau said. “Something I’ll say to people, if they look at it through a peephole or somewhat of a closed mind, it will piss them off, but whenever I see somebody fail, and they come and tell me about it, usually complaining, I just ask them, ‘Did you learn anything? What did you learn?’ And sometimes, if they’re already aggravated, they’re quick to think I’m being condescending with them, but literally I’m asking a question. ‘What did you learn from this? Okay, it might have cost you x amount of dollars, but what did you learn from it?’ When my cooks burn something or they mess up a stock, or just little weird things that cost me money, I’m investing in that person right there. ‘What did you learn from this? It was an expensive mistake, so tell me you learned something. ‘Cause I just don’t want to just fire you.’ It took me a long time to get there. You have to put your ego in your pocket sometimes.”

Special Guest: Donnie Ferneau.

Episode 3: Melissa Diller: Using Drama to Build Confidence

Elizabeth Silverstein — Mon, 06 Aug 2018 08:45:00 -0400

Melissa Diller at first transferred her Verizon job and then quit and started Drama Kids, a franchise that has existed for the past 30 years. “We teach educationally-based drama to all school-aged kids,” Diller explained. “Basically all we’re doing is building confidence in public speaking through fun drama activities so that kids have the confidence to be whatever they end up being, whether it’s a doctor, or stage performer, actress.”

Working with a franchise framework still meant that Diller had to develop her business from the ground up, building relationships, growing her outreach, and finding business mentors. “As a business owner, you have to think outside the box, and my mentors were the ones who really taught me that,” Diller shared. “[It’s] thinking outside the box, [and] not listening to the voice inside your head that says ‘really?’”

Special Guest: Melissa Diller.