I've been designing jewelry for about 3 years. Launched my company roughly 2 1/2 years ago. Before that for a decade I was a mosaic artist ( another occupation I had fallen into). Every Holiday season from 2003-2007 I would participate in a 6 week fair held at Grand Central Terminal in NYC. It was exhausting!!! but prosperous. So while the first 1/2 of the year had me in the studio about 70 hours a week that would bump up to over 100 every week from August to January. Needless to say come the new year I needed a vacation. I did just that, I would take a 3-4 week vacation as a gift to myself for working my ass off without a break for 5 months. Each year I would pick a different location. 2007 found me in Morocco and Spain with my friend Robin. I'm the one in the middle , Robin to left looking at the screen.
Morocco was AWESOME! After a week there we headed to Valencia , Spain. Not because they are supposed to have most fab, the bestest, the state of the art aquarium in all of Europe ( which they do) BUT more importantly for city girls ,that's where only one of two rumored Sendra boot outlets were. We had each bought a pair in Amsterdam on a previous trip, they are investment boots, will last a lifetime! Anyway the outlet turned out to be a bust and to console our broken shoe-shopping hearts we went to some cafe on a plaza to drown our sorrows in hot chocolate and churros. A cure-all for any sort of the blues.
While dunkin those churros in the chocolate we couldn't help but notice how relaxed everyone seemed, how cute the guys were, how beautiful the city. I randomly said, " I could live here" and then I heard Robin say with a sigh, " me too". We started to laugh. I said no, I'm serious I could live here , maybe not in Valencia but I could live in Spain. To which she piped in, " Oh me too!"Totally serious. That bit of conversation led to Barcelona and how it would be the perfect city and I could open a mosaic gallery and Robin could do sales ( cause I'm an artist an I hate that part!) and we hatched a plan, gave ourselves a year and half target date to save the money and we would go. We were both single, prospects in NYC dating scene SUCKED, so why not.July 2008 was our move date.
Fast forward to April 2008. I had been working at a ridiculous pace for over a year. I sold to roughly 160 galleries in the States plus commission jobs, I was never not working. But I knew I'd be without an income for a while til we were up and running so was trying to get as much money coming in as I could. That April I was in Aspen for a bathroom installation. A week long job, 2 days in I lost all feeling on my left side, my shoulder to my hand. IT FREAKED ME OUT!! When the feeling came back after a few hours the pain was excruciating, seriously I cried through the remainder of the job, popping advil every 3 hours.
When I got back to NY I went immediately to a neurologist, after many an MRI and nerve conduction tests which are no fun at all, my doctor explained that after 10 years of sitting like a pretzel on the floor hunched over with these mosaics, cutting glass, I had developed a repetitive stress injury in my rotator cuff, neck and bicep with what would be a permanent tendinitis in the shoulder. It seemed from years of being pulled in the wrong direction from bad positioning my muscles had formed new memories, wrong ones.This was causing the muscles to spasm around the nerves. Sounds comfy right? It was not something that could be fixed through surgery ,it was a physical therapy issue. Now only 10 weeks from my move date I immediately went into PT 3x a week 2 hrs a pop. It didn't help. Why? Cause after my sessions, like an idiot ,I'd head back to the studio.
About 8 weeks later and the pain just kept getting worse. So back to Dr. Lustig I went, now 2 1/2 weeks from move date, had not even begun to break down my apartment or studio. It was during that visit that my plans changed.
She told me, in her opinion, and I was free to get another, my days as a craftsman with my hands are done. The inflammation is getting worse as I keep aggravating it. I'll have this injury permanently ,and if I don't stop working how I do I can permanently damage the nerves in my left arm and shoulder. Her words, " Find another job".
Find another job? WTFHoboken ,same ,same rent wise these days) . That's not an easy thing to accomplish. It took me 10 years of literally bloody hands and numerous trips to the ER for stitches ( until I started crazy gluing the cuts together) to get where I was. Find another job, are you high? Unfortunately she wasn't high, but she was serious. AND she was right. AND THAT SUCKED!
OMG, what am I gonna tell Robin ( who was already on the fence about the move as she just moved in with her new boyfriend). I had given up my lease, got rid of my car, had the movers coming to take my stuff to a storage unit in Seacaucus, Bear had been micro chipped. This was a nightmare of a mess, so what do I do, I go into denial. I get home and I start packing. I ignore everything she said and I start packing. I start with my bookshelves and on those shelves I start with my sketch journals.
Reading Intermission- grab a beer :) ( actually, I needed one, this always bums me out)
As I'm thumbing through these journals deciding which to store, which to trash and which to bring I come across some sketches of jewelry, cuffs to be exact, big arm cuffs, in my mosaic designs, clearly I had sketched these cuffs, from 5 years prior. It was like a huge freakin halogen light bulb went off above my head. Had I thought about jewelry design back then? I must have, the drawings were mine, but I couldn't recall why I had drawn them, pages of them, in detail. And then it hit me, if I could design jewelry but have others make it, I can still be an artist, not a craftsman but a designer. I could still work for myself, be creative, just work smart not hard.
My head was swirling with ideas, I ran over to the computer and googled jewelry making schools in Barcelona, not much came up so I tried in Europe and the city that came up with the most programs up front was Florence. I googled silver production, materials, cost factors, and based on what I read decided that not only would I move to Florence and design jewelry BUT I would travel to Bali, long on my list of places to see and have my designs made there. I know , Italy, Bali, Eat, Pray, Love, so NOT! Anyway, I stayed up all night and in less than 24 hours from the words "find a new job", I did. Just like that , I switched gears, got a hold of Robin , explained the situation, she was still on board, her BF was cool with her going to Italy for at least a 6 months - a year. We pushed back to Aug 7th which gave us just under 6 weeks to pull this off.
Next I notified the parents, who were beyond supportive. Not so when I started with the mosaics. I remember that Sunday years back chatting with my dad. I had been working in the art dept. of a film that had just wrapped. He asked if I had found a new show and I told him I wasn't looking because I was going to be a mosaicist. A whatacist???? A mosaicist dad! Someone who does mosaics!! He said ," Andrea, that's a hobby, not a job!!! Followed by ," JUDY!!!!!! Pick up the phone!!!! Your daughter wants to make mosaics!!!!!"
They had seen how I built that " hobby" into a thriving business and had no doubt if I said I'd do it that I would. Everyone else pretty much thought I was nuts. They would say, Andrea it's one thing to move to a country where you don't speak the language but know your business that you have mastered. It's another to go to a country where you don't speak the language doing something you've never done before. Those words are the ones that made me think really? we''ll see. I accept that challenge!
I had been to Florence on 5 occasions prior, it was never my favorite of the Italian cities, in fact it was my least favorite.I thought it was beautiful alright but I much preferred the constant BUZZ of Rome. Rome was too expensive both school and rent wise. So I settled on Florence. But this city/town has grown on me, immensely. It was a snap decision, haven't regretted it one bit. Questioned it on some days, but never regretted it. Not once.
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