Featured Artists: Honoring The Ancestors
For the fall issue of Therapeutic Thymes I suggested to Jeanne, the creator of TT, to try a new feature for the fall issue. My idea was to feature an artist that I thought matched the theme of the issue, which was to Honor The Ancestors. She liked my idea and let me run with the concept. So, I reached out to Stacia Baldwin of Bestie and Bone, an artist who I’ve been following on Instagram for a while, to see if she was interested in being featured.
So below is an excerpt from the Q&A in the fall issue of Therapeutic Thymes:
Stacia Baldwin and Deb Schaffer are two artists who both found a way to Honor The Ancestors though their work, Stacia’s artwork is portrayed on her Instagram, @beastieandbone. Deb owns Enchanted Botanicals. We asked both the same questions in regard to their art.
What does ‘Honoring The Ancestors’ Mean to you?
Stacia responded:
As someone with few family connections, ancestry is usually an uncomfortable thing for me to consider. But when it comes to art, it clicks immediately. Who I have become, what I value, and the art I create would never have happened without those who came before me. My grandparents specifically. They were the most positively influential people in my life growing up. My grandfather was a science teacher, a principal, a carpenter, and a farmer. My grandmother, who immigrated from Finland after WWII to marry my grandfather, was a natural healer, an artist, and gardener. From them I learned to value the handmade and honor labor. To care for and observe animals both domesticated and wild. And to live in wonder. While much of my childhood was tumultuous, their home was a haven.
I have so many memories of working alongside them in the barn, in the gardens, in the workshop and the house. Of long walks through the farm that had been in our family for hundreds of years. We searched for beavers, turtles, squirrels, frogs, fish, songbirds and hawks. They let me fill my pockets - and theirs - with as many nuts, leaves, beetles, and rocks as caught my eye. Afterwards, we would sit down and admire these treasures. My grandfather would tell me facts about my finds, and my grandmother would get out a huge drawing pad she kept just for the kids. Together, we would draw the deer we had seen by the lake, or that patch of bright buttercups I had found in the pasture.
In this, doing good work, caring about nature, and valuing beauty has always been tied to my relationship with my grandparents. So inexplicably so, that I named my first art business Kalliomäki Designs, in honor of the house my grandfather built for my grandmother. Kalliomäki Designs is now Beastie + Bone, but the why behind it is the same. To take the generational love and husbandry of family land, and extend it to all natural spaces. To pass on the invitation to slow down, to observe, and delight in what’s around you. And to view everything, whether my original thoughts, the bodies and wellbeing of others, or the plants and animals around me, as valuable, as worthwhile, as art.
My grandparents are gone now, and I never got to tell them in person just how large of an impact their love in giving me a safe space to be curious and learn compassion had on me. So as my way of keeping them close, I carry the skills and values they fostered in me into every piece of my art. In doing so, I share them with others, and through those connections their love and care will never fade away.
