What’s your business name and what do you do?
Mitchell & Co. Studio is a is a working art studio, shop and creative gathering space nestled in the belly of a vintage firehouse building in Boothbay Maine, on Wabanaki land. I am a creatress, designer and flowcilitator. My work is about connecting with the healing and enjoyable qualities of the creative process, seeking to cultivate creations and conditions that inspire and reconnect us with a sense of wonder and courage.
Featured works at the studio currently include original hand painted and printed garments, black and white photographs by Robert Mitchell, and an ever-evolving series of artist pop-ups, creative flow circles, and creative community events that center innovation, rest, and connection.
How did you learn your craft?
I am learning something new everyday. While I have no formal art training (I studied Sociology and language at Goucher College in Maryland), I have been making things with my mind and hands for as long as I can remember. I have been lucky to work alongside some brilliant creatives and craftspeople who have taught me not only how to make, but how to think for myself, how to establish my own orientation to creativity and invention and how to trust my creative instincts. I am a very process-oriented creatress. I work in many different mediums — I write poems, learn new languages, make photographs with expired film, write letters, doodle, podcast, paint, print, sketch, sing, compose ambient soundscapes, pour over art books at the library, garden, dance, onewheel, gather with friends to invent a meal or wander in the woods in search of the perfect patch of morning light.. and then I rest. Creative input, creative output, and creative stay put. This is how I learn and integrate my crafts.
I work circularly, allowing the creative current to move from one thing to another, each influence informing the final piece. I hope to remain tenaciously curious until the day I die.
What do you enjoy most about what you do?
The process, the twists and turns. I love gathering the materials I have on hand and allowing myself time and space to play, to be curious, to make a mess. I love being covered in ink and blasting music. I love watching something emerge, the simple sweetness of sculpting an idea into physical form. I love sharing my creations with the world and knowing they are imbued with deep care and wishes for their highest good.
What do you enjoy least?
Bookkeeping, and social media, I think. My body doesn't love screens so I really need to pace myself with my use of technology.
What’s one thing you wish people knew about your work?
My work is a deeply spiritual process, I look at it as peace work. I believe everyone is creative and that due to the real stresses of life and cultural expectations, we can feel distanced from this original life force energy. I believe that reconnecting to that spirit of creativity can help us become more supple, less divided, more compassionate, playful and gentle with ourselves and each other.
I think of creating wearable art pieces as visual prayer, a wish in motion. I do not come from any organized religion, but my work is rooted in a broader understanding of energy and vibration and created with your highest good in mind. Art, like everything, carries a vibration. Wearing art gives an opportunity to be close to the creative current and hopefully remind you that it lives within you too. Not everyone has a house with walls that can hold canvases and photos, but everyone has a body and I love creating pieces that can be enjoyed at the DMV or at the Louvre.
What’s one artist you look up to?
So hard to just pick one. To me, creativity is an ever-unfolding collaboration with an infinite number of influences. Some of these influences are people, and some are inanimate like the way the afternoon light drizzles its way across the floor in the afternoon at the studio. I really look up to Friday Kahlo and the way she worked with her physical pain to alchemize it into beauty and activism.
What do you do when you’re not making?
As little as possible, as well as enjoying quality time with dear people that I cherish. The normal comings and goings of life responsibility of course, but I really cherish time to daydream and rest. Simplicity and community have been my greatest medicine in many ways, that and the icy ocean. Along with my amazing husband Andrei, and many other Little Dippers, as we call ourselves, we dip into the ocean everyday year round.
Night owl or early bird?
Neither, I guess. I sleep as much as my body asks for, the best that I can manage. I've navigated a chronic illness for years and prioritize rest and tender care for my body, whenever possible.
What's your favorite place in Maine?
Monhegan island on the cliffs.