Art is what makes us human. It’s the creative manifestation of our spirit and deepest passions. This month, we spotlight three artisans and makers who are leaving their creative fingerprints on the works around them. Whether it’s visual media or a physical product, these ladies are channeling their gifts into something remarkable.
LINDSEY KREZECZOWSKI
THE RUSTIC CRAFTSMAN
While her kids are fast asleep, Lindsey Krezeczowski is in her garage grinding away with her power tools. She slices through fresh slabs of wood to shape the handle and body of what she’ll transform into a colorful charcuterie board.
“I don’t think people realize how much cutting and shaping goes into each board,” she says. Lindsey, who owns The Rustic Craftsman along with her husband, has elevated the lowly charcuterie board into fine art. Each board is sawed, sanded and layered with thick swaths of colored resin. Lindsey swirls and shapes the resin layers into flowing patterns that resemble ocean waves. The boards are then sanded and oiled again before reaching their final destination on someone’s tabletop.
“They’re fun. They’re cool,” Lindsey says. “I like them because there’s not one that’s the same.”
Each design is custom made with cypress, maple or black walnut wood. Lindsey uses turquoise, purples and bright yellows in her designs to mimic a sandy beach or tropical sunset. Most are inspired by photographs or Lindsey’s own experience growing up by the ocean.
Occasionally, though, she gets a request for a college theme or something not-so-ordinary. She and her husband also create river tables, handmade wooden tables with a thick stream of blue resin layers across the center. The two pride themselves on designing and building one-of-a-kind pieces that will last generations. The two began their business building farmhouse-style tables, but Lindsey’s eye-catching charcuterie boards quickly took over the enterprise. Her orders reached more than one hundred requests during Christmastime. These days, she’s still the main maker of the boards. She hopes her soothing designs will spark the imagination and transport people to a happy beachside memory.
TheRusticCraftsman.com
CASSANDRA BOHNE-LINNARD
BLUE BUTTERFLY DESIGNS
Cassandra Bohne-Linnard is obsessed with butterflies. She paints them, she photographs them, grows flowers to feed them, and when they die, she brings them back to life.
Cassandra, a painter-turned-butterfly artist, creates vibrant art pieces using the preserved bodies of real butterflies. From wooden clocks to mixed media, Cassandra finds a way to style exotic butterflies as they would appear in nature. Each butterfly is delicately revived, pinned and preserved indefinitely behind framed glass.
“These are all natural,” Cassandra says. “Every single butterfly. This is their God-given beauty. Each of them are unique works of art themselves.”
Every step of Cassandra’s art is carefully coordinated. She imports the creatures from around the globe – all have died naturally – to her Cypress home. Each arrives in an envelope dehydrated and brittle. Cassandra then painstakingly rehydrates each insect in a moist chamber – a kind of bug spa – to revive the butterfly’s color and soften its wings. She then poses the butterflies on clocks or beneath glass domes in a way that captures their beauty mid-flight, as if each were still living.
“It’s really a delicate process,” she says. “They’re so fragile. One wrong move and you could really mess these up.”
Many of Cassandra’s clients see a deep symbology in her butterfly art. Some see them as a symbol of rebirth or hope for better things to come. Many honor loved ones who’ve passed away with butterfly Remembrance Boxes. The boxes hold a photo of a loved one along with a resurrected butterfly. Some order her clocks, her most popular design, as a statement piece for the home. But for Cassandra, her restorative butterfly art is about showing off nature’s diverse beauty. It’s about creating something as unique as the creatures she’s restored.
BlueButterflyDesigns.net
LAUREN ROWLEY
BELLA HUE
When hairstylist Lauren Rowley’s health took a downturn, doctors told her to stop using beauty products and quit her job. Her joints were swollen, she was in constant pain and became allergic to the hair products she used every day. Even the pigment in hair dye would give her reactions. So, after fifteen years as a hairstylist, Lauren left her career to protect her own health.
She made it her mission to create a clean hair care product that could “go toe-to-toe with the professional brands” she’d always used.
“My bar was high because I’m used to using professional-line products,” she says.
And she was determined her products would never damage her health.
The result? Bella Hue organic dry shampoo. It’s a simple, lightweight powder that gets hair feeling clean while also protecting one’s health. Laruen created the powder after listening to clients complain about how regular dry shampoos left their hair feeling icky. The main ingredient, arrowroot powder, not only tames greasy hair but makes unwashed hair feel silky smooth. Other ingredients like lavender and eucalyptus essential oils nourish the scalp.
Laruen, a mom of two, also hopes her dry shampoo will help save time for busy moms who need a quick fix for clean hair. She also wants to change people’s minds about using a dry shampoo in the first place. Each shampoo comes neatly packaged in a tin along with an application brush. One tin lasts up to six months. Each is handmade in small batches and packaged with care.
“This is not your mom’s baby powder under the sink,” she says.
Eventually, Lauren hopes to expand her product line and offer a multitude of hair products. Currently, in addition to the dry shampoos, she offers a shampoo bar, a conditioner bar and hair accessories.
Bella-Hue.com
BRITTANY MURRAY
ARTIST AND ILLUSTRATOR
Brittany Murray loves it when people react to her work. It might spark curiosity, a new perspective or even a sense of empathy.
“We all go about our day-to-day in our own little lives,” she says. “For two people to connect over something is rarer than we might imagine.”
Art is a lifelong pursuit for the art director and mom of two. She’s been drawing since she was old enough to hold a pencil, often filling spiral notebooks with sketches of dinosaurs or ponies as fast as her parents could purchase her supplies.
For Brittany, inspiration is everywhere. She has so many ideas she can’t get to them all. Her sketchbooks are crammed with vivid scenes that run the gamut of human emotion. Some, like her portrait of a mountainside Japanese retreat, are whimsical, bright and stem purely from her imagination. Others are more sinister, cathartic and reflect the darker life experiences we all share. She once created a series illustrating when she felt insecure and angry at work. One image shows a woman sinking underwater and another shows a woman pulling her hair across the page.
Her body of work is as varied as her process — but she likes it that way. Her larger pieces depicting fresh fruits or plants could add a vibrant flair to someone’s living space while some of her mermaid portraits could fit neatly on a greeting card. Colored pencils, watercolor, acrylics or makers are her mediums of choice, and she’s always experimenting. Each piece is a creative act of courage. A little journey for the soul.
“It’s such a discovery thing,” she says. “You find out who you really are, but it’s always just joy. Just pure joy.”
Brittany-Murray.com