My Story Continued...
Eventually I got to middle school, 6th grade, where art was finally an official class. One day, my teacher introduced shading—an absolute game-changer.
Within 3 years, I went from drawing blob-like stick figures to making portraits where you could actually recognize the person. A true glow-up.
Fast forward to adulthood, where I—like most people—got distracted by the whole “having a job” thing. Art became a rarely visited side hobby. Then I met Manish (love at first swipe—thanks, online dating algorithms!), got married, and, as we merged our lives together, we had the brilliant idea to turn my house into an Airbnb. The problem? Furnishing a place is expensive. Solution? Thrift stores, online returns, Goodwill, Habitat for Humanity ReStores—you name it, we scoured it.
And that’s when the magic happened. I started restoring and repainting old furniture and discarded art, giving them new life. There was something deeply satisfying about taking a scratched-up, faded, soon-to-be-landfill victim and transforming it into something beautiful. Like Cinderella, but for art. Also, I was frustrated with the consumer cycle of buying and tossing things—so why not turn sustainability into an art form?
My Mission
And that’s how I found my mission: creating things that are artfully sustainable and beautifully unique. It’s not just about making pretty things—it’s about proving that discarded doesn’t mean worthless, that old can become new, and that creativity can be a force for sustainability. There’s something deeply fulfilling about breathing life back into forgotten objects, giving them a second chance, much like art did for me when I needed an outlet as a kid. Do I still experiment with other art forms? Absolutely. But this? This is my passion.