As I sit down to write about my creative journey and the paths that led to where I am today, I realize it has been about as patternless and organic as the form my artwork currently takes.
I grew up in the suburbs of Chicago, in what I would describe as a very noisy, chaotic, frenzied household. As a highly sensitive little person who was easily overstimulated, I would often retreat with my cat to the safety of the basement, and there I would draw and paint for hours under buzzing fluorescent lights. It was a safe place to express myself without judgment, and the activity would quiet me enough to make sense of the puzzle pieces of emotions that swarmed my head. I would have stacks of loose drawings, diaries — and eventually sketchbooks — that I would hide away up in the tiles of that 1970s drop ceiling.
As a kid, my art was first a compulsion, and then a learned coping mechanism used to escape the noises of both a loud television and the dysfunctional screaming of family chaos upstairs.
It was in high school where an incredible art teacher first opened my eyes to the idea that maybe my artmaking was important. I can recall clearly the day when he referred to me as an “artist.” That word fell over me like a security blanket. I began to view that wood-paneled basement as my first art studio, a place where the world melted away and I was important. I created a little sanctuary where my inner world felt calm and kind.
At 18, I secured a scholarship to School of the Art Institute of Chicago and, just weeks after high school graduation, I took my trusted cat, Rudy, and said goodbye to my childhood home. In school I studied painting and drawing, mixed media and found-object sculpture. The studios were glorious — huge wide-open spaces for easels and overflowing with resources — and when I wasn’t making art or working odd jobs, I would haunt thrift stores for vintage finds.
I always had a love of expressing myself with clothing, finding a certain calm in the treasure hunt of a secondhand shop. My imagination, while scouring racks of clothing, would fire on the same cylinders as the art-making process. Somehow the experience hits the same pleasure centers. I still can’t explain that.
In the summers of my art school years, I worked trade shows for my aunt, who owned a showroom at the Apparel Mart in Chicago, where she represented several clothing lines. (Even as a little girl, I begged her to take me to work with her, where I would steam and tag samples in exchange for high-end clothing.) The fashion industry was slowly changing. The movement toward fast fashion was in its early years and, as a person who was very sensitive to my environment, I was acutely aware that this trend could not possibly be good for the planet. (All the more reason to shop secondhand!)
After art school, I believed that as long as there was time to still make art, I would be OK waiting tables, working trade shows and tending bar. This quickly proved to be detrimental to my mental health, as these environments left me overstimulated and exhausted, with little time to recover between shifts. I remember desperately longing for those art school days. I would even, at times, long for that basement.
A career in fine art seemed well out of reach, but my love of clothing and thrifting seemed to be a possible career path. I had an incredible vintage clothing collection and I had fine-tuned my treasure-hunting skills, so I scraped together all of my pennies to open a tiny vintage clothing store.
After struggling financially to pay the rising rents in Chicago (in an area that, at the time, had little retail foot traffic), I decided to uproot for a smaller city and lower cost of living. I had hoped that with a slower pace and the help of a business partner, I would have the ability to carve out time for artmaking again. I landed in Louisville, and opened another retail shop.
This boutique was bigger, and we carried small-batch regional designer clothing, along with vintage finds, handmade jewelry, and gifts made by local craftspeople. This shop became a beacon for a like-minded community, and I loved our customers and artisans. We would champion causes we cared about: You could register to vote at our shop; sign up to be a member of the ACLU; and you could buy eco-friendly vintage clothing, records and books.
The demand for vintage exceeded our ability to thrift fast enough, so when pressed for inventory, we found our way to wiping and stuffing mills throughout the U.S. At these recycled textile mills, used clothing would be sorted — some for export, some to be shredded for rags and stuffing for car interiors and the like.
Here, we would climb into huge bins wearing gloves and dust masks, scouring these massive warehouses for vintage and retro clothes. It may not have been glamorous, but it was sure fun.
When we returned from these buying trips, the laundering, tagging and steaming began — not to mention taxes and payroll. I had become a businessperson.
In the more than a decade of owning this shop, I found joy in getting lost in the day-to-day merchandising. I’d create vignettes throughout the store. I would color coordinate everything. I would stay for hours after closing to do the always-elaborate-and-ever-changing window displays. I loved to create tiny installations throughout the store and within the jewelry cases, delighting in arranging and rearranging obsessively.
I will admit that having such a public-facing job was at times difficult, and I knew it wasn’t going to sustain me creatively for much longer. I had one of those moments — as if the clouds parted and the sun beamed down on three suede skirts that had sat in the store collecting dust — and I thought: Before these end up back at the Goodwill store, what if I turn them into tote bags?
Despite having amassed an impressive collection of vintage pincushions, antique sewing notions and antique purse handles, I only possessed the most rudimentary sewing skills … but I got out the old Sears Kenmore machine that I had lugged from apartment to apartment through the years and began to make the most basic suede bags. They were a hit at our shop, and I sent one to my aunt to show her wholesale buyers at a tradeshow in Chicago.
My aunt started to take orders and called every few hours to ask, “Can you make 25 more?” … “50?” … “100?” And that was the beginning of my new business.
I would sit at night sewing these basic skirts into tote bags under a little clip light, the machine purring alongside Rudy, who was well into her senior years (she was 22 years old when she left her earthly body). While making those bags, the world melted away. I was in the zone — a place I had only glimmers of for years — my creative juices flowing.
I imagined repurposed leather garments of all designs that were far outside my skillset. I was about to close one chapter of my life and open another — one of self-discovery and learning. I began deconstructing leather jackets to make clutch purses, utilizing the existing zippers and snap closures. I would keep the designs I sold through my aunt’s wholesale business basic in order to replicate a sample, so I needed more and more suede and leather skirts. The boutique markets were slowly opening their eyes to the idea of more sustainable fashion, and I gave them a taste of that.
I could not find these items fast enough. When I called the recycled textile mill to inquire about the availability of leather, they informed me that leather, suede and fur garments were immediately sent to the landfill. Because these items contain moisture, they are not suitable to be recycled for wiping or stuffing purposes, and repurposing was — at least at that time — the only way to prolong its use as a “textile.”
Having this knowledge fueled my fire. I sold my half of the store and moved to the mountains of North Carolina with an old art school buddy and turned my focus to this new passion project, which I named Inherited Leather.
I began to explore all that could be created by repurposing leather garments. The nature of deconstructing and reconstructing garments meant most pieces were one of a kind. I would really push my home sewing machine to see how much it could withstand, wearing safety goggles as broken needles would fly through the studio.
I knew this wasn’t traditional leather work, and I knew it wasn’t garment sewing. It was my own “something else,” and it was working for me. I took a little from the world of old needlecrafts, applique, quilting and traditional leather braiding, and even tried weaving it. I began seeking out discarded leather upholstery to work with, finding repurposing leather with fewer existing seams to be freeing.
I amassed a large body of one-of-a-kind bags and returned to Louisville to do my first large-scale art fair, where I had a community of folks waiting to see what I’d been up to while away.
I was aware at the time of the many vintage buyers who sold through eBay, and the artisans who were able to live off in the mountains or the countryside and keep their businesses alive through online sales, but I hadn’t ever been good at that. It’s always been such a thrill when selling directly to a customer — seeing how a piece is received, how it’s held, and being able to tell its story — something that my wholesale business could never give me.
I moved back to Louisville to be closer to my customers and community, and I found I had established a loyal customer base of which I am so grateful.
When I returned, I rented an incredible studio space in, ironically, an old worsted wool mill not far from my apartment and twice the size of where I lived. It had 16-feet-high windows where the light would stream in in the afternoons. I could walk there from my tiny apartment, but I usually drove because I would work late into the night.
Listening to the sounds of police sirens and frequent domestic fights outside, I befriended the guard dog in the scrap metal yard across the street. I was content in that art studio, where I spent days and nights doing the very solitary work that I enjoy.
However, as much as I loved the peace and solitude, there was something missing. I hadn’t yet met my person.
Fortunately, I was patient and I did meet him. And, after dating for a few years, we bought the home where we currently live. Here, we built my art studio just off the garage. Although this space is much smaller, it forces me to stay organized; and working from home allows me to give our older dogs the time and attention they deserve. I foster cats in the studio during the slower part of the art fair season.
Lately, I’ve found my way into the world of tooling vegetable-tanned leather, which combines my love of sculpture and painting, and I’ve had the joy of creating a small custom business doing leather guitar straps, belts and wallets, alongside my bags.
My husband and I married in 2021 (we were in our 50s, and it was a first time for both of us), and live a joyous life residing with two senior Chihuahuas and four cats (two of which were foster “fails”).
While I work, I try to keep the chaos of the outside world quiet with a healthy streaming of true crime podcasts. Although I know this home is not our final destination, I fill my days making art and daydreaming of what that next studio might hold in store.
As I sit down to write about my creative journey and the paths that led to where I am today, I realize it has been about as patternless and organic as the form my artwork currently takes.
I grew up in the suburbs of Chicago, in what I would describe as a very noisy, chaotic, frenzied household. As a highly sensitive little person who was easily overstimulated, I would often retreat with my cat to the safety of the basement, and there I would draw and paint for hours under buzzing fluorescent lights. It was a safe place to express myself without judgment, and the activity would quiet me enough to make sense of the puzzle pieces of emotions that swarmed my head. I would have stacks of loose drawings, diaries — and eventually sketchbooks — that I would hide away up in the tiles of that 1970s drop ceiling.
As a kid, my art was first a compulsion, and then a learned coping mechanism used to escape the noises of both a loud television and the dysfunctional screaming of family chaos upstairs.
It was in high school where an incredible art teacher first opened my eyes to the idea that maybe my artmaking was important. I can recall clearly the day when he referred to me as an “artist.” That word fell over me like a security blanket. I began to view that wood-paneled basement as my first art studio, a place where the world melted away and I was important. I created a little sanctuary where my inner world felt calm and kind.
At 18, I secured a scholarship to School of the Art Institute of Chicago and, just weeks after high school graduation, I took my trusted cat, Rudy, and said goodbye to my childhood home. In school I studied painting and drawing, mixed media and found-object sculpture. The studios were glorious — huge wide-open spaces for easels and overflowing with resources — and when I wasn’t making art or working odd jobs, I would haunt thrift stores for vintage finds.
I always had a love of expressing myself with clothing, finding a certain calm in the treasure hunt of a secondhand shop. My imagination, while scouring racks of clothing, would fire on the same cylinders as the art-making process. Somehow the experience hits the same pleasure centers. I still can’t explain that.
In the summers of my art school years, I worked trade shows for my aunt, who owned a showroom at the Apparel Mart in Chicago, where she represented several clothing lines. (Even as a little girl, I begged her to take me to work with her, where I would steam and tag samples in exchange for high-end clothing.) The fashion industry was slowly changing. The movement toward fast fashion was in its early years and, as a person who was very sensitive to my environment, I was acutely aware that this trend could not possibly be good for the planet. (All the more reason to shop secondhand!)
After art school, I believed that as long as there was time to still make art, I would be OK waiting tables, working trade shows and tending bar. This quickly proved to be detrimental to my mental health, as these environments left me overstimulated and exhausted, with little time to recover between shifts. I remember desperately longing for those art school days. I would even, at times, long for that basement.
A career in fine art seemed well out of reach, but my love of clothing and thrifting seemed to be a possible career path. I had an incredible vintage clothing collection and I had fine-tuned my treasure-hunting skills, so I scraped together all of my pennies to open a tiny vintage clothing store.
After struggling financially to pay the rising rents in Chicago (in an area that, at the time, had little retail foot traffic), I decided to uproot for a smaller city and lower cost of living. I had hoped that with a slower pace and the help of a business partner, I would have the ability to carve out time for artmaking again. I landed in Louisville, and opened another retail shop.
This boutique was bigger, and we carried small-batch regional designer clothing, along with vintage finds, handmade jewelry, and gifts made by local craftspeople. This shop became a beacon for a like-minded community, and I loved our customers and artisans. We would champion causes we cared about: You could register to vote at our shop; sign up to be a member of the ACLU; and you could buy eco-friendly vintage clothing, records and books.
The demand for vintage exceeded our ability to thrift fast enough, so when pressed for inventory, we found our way to wiping and stuffing mills throughout the U.S. At these recycled textile mills, used clothing would be sorted — some for export, some to be shredded for rags and stuffing for car interiors and the like.
Here, we would climb into huge bins wearing gloves and dust masks, scouring these massive warehouses for vintage and retro clothes. It may not have been glamorous, but it was sure fun.
When we returned from these buying trips, the laundering, tagging and steaming began — not to mention taxes and payroll. I had become a businessperson.
In the more than a decade of owning this shop, I found joy in getting lost in the day-to-day merchandising. I’d create vignettes throughout the store. I would color coordinate everything. I would stay for hours after closing to do the always-elaborate-and-ever-changing window displays. I loved to create tiny installations throughout the store and within the jewelry cases, delighting in arranging and rearranging obsessively.
I will admit that having such a public-facing job was at times difficult, and I knew it wasn’t going to sustain me creatively for much longer. I had one of those moments — as if the clouds parted and the sun beamed down on three suede skirts that had sat in the store collecting dust — and I thought: Before these end up back at the Goodwill store, what if I turn them into tote bags?
Despite having amassed an impressive collection of vintage pincushions, antique sewing notions and antique purse handles, I only possessed the most rudimentary sewing skills … but I got out the old Sears Kenmore machine that I had lugged from apartment to apartment through the years and began to make the most basic suede bags. They were a hit at our shop, and I sent one to my aunt to show her wholesale buyers at a tradeshow in Chicago.
My aunt started to take orders and called every few hours to ask, “Can you make 25 more?” … “50?” … “100?” And that was the beginning of my new business.
I would sit at night sewing these basic skirts into tote bags under a little clip light, the machine purring alongside Rudy, who was well into her senior years (she was 22 years old when she left her earthly body). While making those bags, the world melted away. I was in the zone — a place I had only glimmers of for years — my creative juices flowing.
I imagined repurposed leather garments of all designs that were far outside my skillset. I was about to close one chapter of my life and open another — one of self-discovery and learning. I began deconstructing leather jackets to make clutch purses, utilizing the existing zippers and snap closures. I would keep the designs I sold through my aunt’s wholesale business basic in order to replicate a sample, so I needed more and more suede and leather skirts. The boutique markets were slowly opening their eyes to the idea of more sustainable fashion, and I gave them a taste of that.
I could not find these items fast enough. When I called the recycled textile mill to inquire about the availability of leather, they informed me that leather, suede and fur garments were immediately sent to the landfill. Because these items contain moisture, they are not suitable to be recycled for wiping or stuffing purposes, and repurposing was — at least at that time — the only way to prolong its use as a “textile.”
Having this knowledge fueled my fire. I sold my half of the store and moved to the mountains of North Carolina with an old art school buddy and turned my focus to this new passion project, which I named Inherited Leather.
I began to explore all that could be created by repurposing leather garments. The nature of deconstructing and reconstructing garments meant most pieces were one of a kind. I would really push my home sewing machine to see how much it could withstand, wearing safety goggles as broken needles would fly through the studio.
I knew this wasn’t traditional leather work, and I knew it wasn’t garment sewing. It was my own “something else,” and it was working for me. I took a little from the world of old needlecrafts, applique, quilting and traditional leather braiding, and even tried weaving it. I began seeking out discarded leather upholstery to work with, finding repurposing leather with fewer existing seams to be freeing.
I amassed a large body of one-of-a-kind bags and returned to Louisville to do my first large-scale art fair, where I had a community of folks waiting to see what I’d been up to while away.
I was aware at the time of the many vintage buyers who sold through eBay, and the artisans who were able to live off in the mountains or the countryside and keep their businesses alive through online sales, but I hadn’t ever been good at that. It’s always been such a thrill when selling directly to a customer — seeing how a piece is received, how it’s held, and being able to tell its story — something that my wholesale business could never give me.
I moved back to Louisville to be closer to my customers and community, and I found I had established a loyal customer base of which I am so grateful.
When I returned, I rented an incredible studio space in, ironically, an old worsted wool mill not far from my apartment and twice the size of where I lived. It had 16-feet-high windows where the light would stream in in the afternoons. I could walk there from my tiny apartment, but I usually drove because I would work late into the night.
Listening to the sounds of police sirens and frequent domestic fights outside, I befriended the guard dog in the scrap metal yard across the street. I was content in that art studio, where I spent days and nights doing the very solitary work that I enjoy.
However, as much as I loved the peace and solitude, there was something missing. I hadn’t yet met my person.
Fortunately, I was patient and I did meet him. And, after dating for a few years, we bought the home where we currently live. Here, we built my art studio just off the garage. Although this space is much smaller, it forces me to stay organized; and working from home allows me to give our older dogs the time and attention they deserve. I foster cats in the studio during the slower part of the art fair season.
Lately, I’ve found my way into the world of tooling vegetable-tanned leather, which combines my love of sculpture and painting, and I’ve had the joy of creating a small custom business doing leather guitar straps, belts and wallets, alongside my bags.
My husband and I married in 2021 (we were in our 50s, and it was a first time for both of us), and live a joyous life residing with two senior Chihuahuas and four cats (two of which were foster “fails”).
While I work, I try to keep the chaos of the outside world quiet with a healthy streaming of true crime podcasts. Although I know this home is not our final destination, I fill my days making art and daydreaming of what that next studio might hold in store.
