Local artisans share what creating means to them
Published: 12-27-2024 11:58 AM |
Donni Webber grew up in South Africa and has traveled around the world. However, she said the way she’s experienced creativity in the Monadnock Region is like no other place she’s seen.
“Creativity is a way of life here,” the Dublin resident said. “People who live here do so in a creative way. I’ve had friends move here, and within a few months of living here they’ve started creating their own art when they had never done so before in their life. There’s some sort of magic here.”
Webber has been an artist most of her life. She runs her own business, The Gratitude Farm, selling her ceramics and other handmade goods like jewelry and needle felting. With more than 50,000 followers on Instagram and several years of selling her creations, Webber sounds like a model small-business success story.
But what matters most to her aren’t the sales. It’s the solace the act of creating brings to her life.
“[Working with clay] is the only time my mind goes completely blank,” she said. “I don’t think about anything; I don’t worry about anything; I am being just as I am when I’m creating with clay.”
Approximately 2.6 million artists were in the U.S. workforce as of 2023, or 1.6 percent of all workers, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. This number captures a mere portion of the artisan workforce though, since the government analyzes the data through 11 occupational categories that don’t explicitly include crafts workers.
Artisans and their work can be found in abundance across the Monadnock Region. The Hannah Grimes Marketplace in downtown Keene is home to more than 250 creators, according to its website. Meanwhile, the holiday season brings pop-up craft markets and artisan booths throughout the region in December.
The Sentinel spoke with two local artisans, both of whom were vendors at the Last Minute Larry Holiday Market at Brewbakers in Keene on Sunday about their professions. Their perspectives provide a glimpse into the area artisan industry, what might motivate people to merge creative expression with commerce and the pride people feel in this passion-driven work.
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Webber and her family lived in California for roughly 16 years before moving to New Hampshire in 2016. Her husband, Matthew, is from New Zealand and had a career as a professional rugby player before finding a job as a rugby coach in the Golden State. But Donni Webber missed being around nature, with most of their time in California in an urban environment, and said she prompted their move to the East Coast.
“I had followed him his whole career, and he thought it was time to follow me,” she said.
Webber’s work is deeply rooted in her profound connection to nature and her passion for foraging in the lush forests surrounding her Dublin home. It began when her daughter was in kindergarten. The two used to forage for materials to create fairy gardens each spring.
“They’d become these beautiful creations — moss, sticks, acorns and feathers, you name it! — and we’d leave them for others to find,” Webber said. Then her daughter grew up.
“And you know how that goes,” Webber said. Her daughter no longer wanted to make the fairy gardens, but Webber was compelled to keep doing them for herself.
“We focus on our children so much. And when they grow up, we have to find ourselves. [Creating] keeps you young and enjoying life.”
She wanted to send her two children to a local Waldorf school, but wasn’t able to afford it.
“I had never sold anything before, but I loved to needle felt,” she said. So, she created an Etsy account and started selling needle felted figurines. The venture allowed her to afford her kids’ tuition.
Webber shifted away from Etsy after a few years and launched her own website.
“At the end of my Esty journey ... I was creating things that people bought. I was reproducing the same thing over and over again,” she said. With her own website, she said she has more control over what she creates. She schedules “drops,” or days that the online shop will be reopened with new pieces for sale, and shares them via social media.
She’s since written a book about creating fairy gardens and how to share them with others. Her business, The Gratitude Farm, is her full-time job. Her main focus at the moment is ceramics, but she shares a lot about her other creative pursuits and experiences with nature on Instagram. During a time when many might find social media draining, Webber said the platform gives her purpose to be able to do some of her favorite things like mushroom foraging.
“It’s connected me with so many like-minded people all over the world,” she said of Instagram. “There are times where I just need a break and get out of sharing, of course, but as a whole it’s a joyful thing for me.”
Webber said the minute she arrived in the Granite State she felt she was meant to be here.
“There’s so much here, there’s a special energy,” Webber said. “When you are present in your surroundings, you can recreate it. That’s where meaning or being compelled to create art comes from [for me]. The complete beauty around us.”
Monica Rico quit drinking six years ago. Around that same time, she attended a block printing workshop with a friend.
“I sort of became obsessed with it in my early recovery, as a form of distraction,” Rico said. “I found it to be therapeutic.”
Block printing was purely for herself for a few years. Then she started sharing pictures of her work with friends and family.
“Everyone, just enthusiastically and unabashedly, encouraged me to start selling it,” she said with a laugh. What began as tables at local art markets and farmers markets grew into her own business.
Rico runs Wood Thrush Farm from her studio in Henniker, the town where she grew up, hand carving linocut block prints. She handprints onto textiles such as tea towels, cloth napkins, tote bags and clothing. A juried member of the League of N.H. Craftsmen, Rico also teaches block printing workshops on both paper and fabric in her studio.
“Teaching other people in workshops is a huge motivation and inspiration for me,” Rico, now a Hopkinton resident, said. “A lot of people come to a workshop feeling like they can’t create, and they leave feeling like they’ve accomplished something and feeling proud.”
She’s been the organizer of the Henniker Community Market for 14 years. Roughly five years ago, she started organizing events through an initiative called Henniker Handmade and Homegrown, which features two large-scale arts markets each year.
Being an artisan is often a full-time gig for Rico, which she is excited about. However, she notes it can be difficult to balance the joy of creating with consumer demands.
“Sometimes the things that sell the best are not the things I necessarily feel like making,” she said. “Around Christmastime, that’s extra hard. I’m not particularly into Christmas decorations. The closest I’ve come is snowflakes.”
Rico said she tends to make whatever she wants, though, and hope for the best. And being a self-employed maker has allowed her the freedom to be the parent she wants to be. The mother of three boys — ages 16, 13 and 10 — she serves as a model for what is possible for her children.
“I’m very fortunate and privileged to have a partner who works full-time, he is a carpenter and is the main source of income too,” Rico said. “But I take pride in modeling for [my kids] how to be a community organizer and a self-employed maker. They’ve grown up in the farmers market scene, and they see that they can do whatever they want to do with their lives.”
These articles are being shared by partners in the Granite State News Collaborative. For more information, visit collaborativenh.org.