ArtFire Featured Artisan: Gillian Soskin, gillianbeads

Art, whether in my professional life as a dentist, or in my part-time life as a lampwork and jewelry artisan, occupies a good portion of my consciousness at any one time. I have memberships to several local and regional art galleries, and I always make time when travelling to visit local art exhibits.

The creative process is elusive sometimes…the ideas come, but not fully formed, and I have to let the artistic elements sort themselves out before I can accomplish the technical part of any skill.

If there’s one thing that defines you, what is it?

I try to understand other’s viewpoints, and can see a particular issue from several perspectives. This is both an asset and a pitfall, as others can see it as indecision, whereas I see it as carefully weighing the various factors that go into one’s decision-making process.

What role does your family play in your art?

My family and my home are my “comfort ground”. I have a wonderfully supportive husband, and four terrific children…27, 22, 17, and 14 years old. My husband built my glass studio for me, and is a great source of insight and guidance when it comes to the “how can I accomplish that?” questions.

Where do you live and what is it like?

I live in London, Ontario, Canada, in a house with a big lot that sweeps down into a ravine. Regular visitors to our yard are deer, fox, skunks, raccoons, and a great horned owl. I call it my little slice of paradise.

Where did you learn to craft?

I’ve been crafting since I can remember. I got my first “paint by number” black velvet oil painting kit when I was seven. Crewelwork and knitting was next, beadwork and cross-stitch followed, then sewing, and mosaic art. I’ve always been fascinated by glass and took my first lampworking course three years ago….eureka, this is IT!!!

Who is your favorite craft supplier?

My favorite craft supplier for jewelry supplies is Artbeads, great selection and really good prices! My favorite glass supplier is Artistry In Glass, a local shop who’s customer service is unmatched!

If there is a new craft you could learn, what would it be and why?

I would love to take a stained glass course to broaden my horizons and learn the techniques to make windows. Having travelled and seen both historical and modern stained glass windows, I’m in awe of the skill and expertise that is required.

What are your goals with your ArtFire studio?

My ArtFire studio contains both lampwork beads for jewelry designers and finished jewelry pieces. I love to see what other jewelry designers use my beads for and would love to use my ArtFire studio as a platform to expand my business.

Where do you receive your inspiration, in general?

I love nature and the natural world around me: the colors, shapes, and vistas. My inspiration is often acquired from hiking in rugged countryside, the Rocky Mountains are my favorite.

How did you come to selling crafts?

I was making jewelry for family and friends, and they suggested that I could sell it to others. I learned the rudimentary part of website design, and obtained a small business license. I like having an online business because the rest of my life is so busy and selling online allows me to tailor the amount of time I can spend.

Who are your other favorite ArtFire artists?

It’s very difficult to choose only a couple of favorites…there are so many. I love nunofelt’s felted scarves!

How did you come to find a home on ArtFire?

I learned about ArtFire from a number of other sites, forums, and word of mouth. I decided to open a studio and found it a great format to sell from.

What is the best piece of advice you can give other crafters?

The best advice I can offer is to learn to take good photographs, and to use a good photo editing program. Don’t be shy about promoting yourself, your craft, and your colleagues.

What is the most treasured thing in your craft stash?

Without a doubt it is a set of 12mm perfectly matched cultured pearls that my husband bought me for a gift about four years ago. I keep them in a velvet lined box and take them out to look at them, but I haven’t come up with the “perfect” idea of how to use them yet, although when I do it will be with 18K gold.

If you won a thousand dollar craft shopping spree, what would you spend it on?

I would spend it all on glass rods and sterling silver beads.

Why do you think that buying and selling handmade products benefits society?

Learning artisanal techniques brings us back to a day when real value was placed on the effort that goes in to learning and mastering a skill set. In our “consume and throw away” society of today it is valuable to be more aware of those roots of yesteryear. By making handmade products one appreciates the skill and attention to detail in other’s crafts, and gives us a common ground to understanding each other.

Visit Gillianbeads’ ArtFire Studio

Artisan Spotlight: PiratePixieCrew, Lynne Davies

What role does your family play in your art?
My family is everything to me. My sister, brothers and I had a bit of a traumatic childhood, but we learned from it and we are now each others biggest supporters. I know, no matter where my art/crafts take me they will be behind me giving me encouragement and advice. I’m also very lucky to have a tremendously caring, loving partner in Jon. He is the man that does all the heavy lifting, enthuses to others about my work, is my computer geek that fixes all the things I manage to break on both my desktop and laptop. He lifts my heart when I’m struggling and he shares in my delight when I’m hyper excited about something. I wouldn’t want to be without any of them.

Where do you live and what is it like?
I live in South Wales in the UK. We have mountains behind our house and the sea just 20 minutes away. In Wales we get plenty of rain which keeps the rivers and streams full of water and the landscape beautifully green. It’s such a beautiful place.

Where did you learn to craft?
I am pretty much self-taught. My granny taught me basic knitting, like casting on and off, knit and purl. I played with the stitches I knew and worked out others by trial and error. I’m not great at following patterns as I don’t really know what the technical terms for the stitches I do are. I taught myself to crochet too, to sew, draw and make hula hoops. I’ve always been someone that can look at things and visualise how they were created. I think it has to do with me being dyslexic and the fact that from when I was a very small child, I was encouraged by my father to find out how things work by taking them to bits and rebuilding them. He was an Electrical Engineer and creator, so it rubbed off on me.

What is your favourite craft supplier?
I love buying supplies directly from the people that make them. Hence I use many hand spun, hand dyed yarns in my work. I also like to turn things people throw away into usable supplies. I hope in the future I will have my own flock of Bluefaced Leicester sheep which I can shear and spin my own wool. Until that day I buy most of my BFL yarn from The Natural Dye Studio.

If there is a new craft you could learn, what would it be and why?
I’m going to learn to sheep shear and spin yarn this year (hopefully) and I would also like to learn to weave. At the moment I don’t have the space for a loom or a large flock of sheep, but maybe in the future. I want to be able to say that my knitted and crochet goods are wholly and utterly made by me from scratch and I want to branch out into making fabric that I can sew into other exciting projects I have forming in my head. I’d also like to learn website building, but that could take me a long time, so don’t hold your breath. I have a hankering to learn green wood turning too, but that will have to wait for a while.

What are your goals with your ArtFire studio?
I’m hoping to be able to embed my ArtFire shop into a website for the Pirate Pixie Crew. My plan is to create a site that allows people of all ages to indulge their imagination and inner child. I think it is quite sad that children are pushed to grow up too fast these days and we lose the wonderment and excitement that a 2 year old finds in seeing everything for the first time much too quickly. I feel that we all need to let our inner child out to play and let them remind us how to be inventive, creative and adventurous.

Everyone that buys one of the Pirate Pixie Crew hats gets a crew membership card for the site. The site will allow them to put their names into stories of the adventures of Captain Skulduggery Dug’s Pirate Pixie Crew, download pictures to colour in and play games. I see my ArtFire shop as a starting point to funding all this.

How did you come to selling crafts?
Due to ill health I have been stuck at home unable to work for a very long time, so my crafts kept me sane whilst stuck in bed. All the things I created started to built up around me and people began to ask me if they could buy them, so I kind of fell into it. I’m happy to say that I am not often bed ridden any more and that my love of my crafts is still strong and as my health gets better I have more strength to learn more crafts and work on new, and larger projects.

How did you come to find a home on ArtFire?
I found ArtFire through Twitter. I saw a post about the site and checked it out.

What is the best piece of advice you can give other crafters?
If you don’t love it, don’t do it. This is kind of my motto when it comes to crafting. If you can’t pour love into each item you make then stop making them. If anything becomes a chore to me to make, I feel that, it will probably not turn out as well as the pieces I loved making, so why make them.

What is the most treasured thing in your craft stash?
I have an old metal Quality Street sweet tin that is full of buttons that my grandmother collected. I have added to them as did my father did before me. There are so many stories that go with all the vintage buttons. My granny cut buttons off any clothes that were not wearable any more before she used the fabric for something else. She was a very thrifty person. She had lived through WWII and raised 3 boisterous boys on her own, whilst my grandfather was away fighting, so I guess being thrifty went with the territory.

If you won a thousand dollar craft shopping spree, what would you spend it on?
I would give it to my nieces and nephews to spend on lessons in any craft they wanted to learn. I think we need to encourage everyone to learn to make things. The more we can make for ourselves the better, because if we are making them ourselves we know where the items come from, that the person making them earned a living wage for their work and where the supplies used to make the items come from. The western society has got so disconnected from the production of goods they use that they don’t value them any more. Everything has become so disjointed and disposable. I don’t feel we cannot carry on this way.

Visit PiratePixieCrew’s Studio