,

Randy + Stephanie {Ebell Long Beach Wedding}

,

Randy + Stephanie describe their wedding as an event with a modern bohemian tropical feel. "We found Ebell after looking into a sister venue in Los Angeles, and visited Ebell after learning that it had a larger guest capacity.  When we got there, we fell in love with the greenery, the Spanish tile, the flow, and all of the natural light.  There was a definite wow factor without being too formal, that made us feel like this was the place we should get married in."

Randy + Stephanie met online through Coffee Meets Bagel.  (The same app my husband and I used to find each other!).  On their second date, they went on a long hike to Muir Woods.  Her friend warned her that it might not be the best idea since we don't know if this guy is a serial killer or not.  :)  But Stephanie came back from that hike with her face hurting from smiling so much.  Far from a serial killer - this guy was more like an innocent teddy bear! 

This couple is laid back, smart and so personable.  They are loyal to their friends and family and there was nothing but love being poured out that day!  

Dessert + Ice Cream Cart:  Mr and Mrs Creamery
DJ; Sea Star Events; Diane Higgins
Event Planner: Vanessa Barriga
Hair + Make Up: Joy Megumi
Catering: Tres La
Pianist: Pianist on Call
Florist: Le Rosa Alba
Dress: Grace Loves Lace 
Ties: Penguin (Groom), Tie Bar - Groomsmen (@tiebar)
Suits: Indochino
Bridesmaids Dress: Lulus

,

Floral Designer: Hannah of Milieu Florals

,

Milieu is a French word (pronounced mil-yOO) which means ‘atmosphere, surroundings or environment.’  It’s the name Hannah Koo took on for her flower business because she truly believes that flowers have the ability to shape and transform the atmosphere.  Beautiful floral designs can evoke strong emotions and set the tone.

Speaking of “milieu,” (yes, please do say it with a French accent and a beret) Hannah grew up in a creative milieu.  She paints and her educational background in college is in studio arts (UCI) and jewelry design (OTIS).  Her mom did flower arrangements on the side and her dad was a landscape artist.  “Maybe that’s why I was so drawn to being creative with natural things,” she said.

She started working in the floral business 15 years ago when she worked at a flower shop.  

 "When I first started working at a flower shop right after college, it was intended to be just a part time job to save up enough for travel & prepare for Grad School for the Arts.  However, within the first week of working there I fell in love with the whole business aspect of it.  The idea of owning your own shop, so I ended up staying there for 5 years, soaking up everything it took to run a business.  For the first 2 years, I didn't do any design work but was assigned to just cleaning buckets, processing flowers & menial shop duties.  I really worked my way  from the ground up." 

She is now in her 10th year as the owner and designer of Milieu Florals.  Her floral designs have always had a very natural and organic feel to it, even before the “natural and organic” designs were popular.  And maybe her background in painting contributes to her approach to her floral work.

"I work with the color palette rather than the variety of flowers, so I will sometimes use different textures that aren't necessarily flowers, like fruits, branches, and acorn to stay true to the color scheme & feel for the event."

What’s something you would do different in your journey as a florist?

I would probably pick a name that people can pronounce [laughs]. I would be more ok saying, “no” to work and be more selective with the amount of work I took on.  It led to feeling burned out at times because I sometimes took on 60+ orders per year. Now, I feel like I’m finally at a place where I do have the freedom to be more selective in my work and give myself more time for myself and my family.

What do you LOVE about your work?

 I love being able to make people happy and how flowers can change the ambiance of a space.  I love the flexibility of my work.  I like working Wednesday - Saturday, even though I sometimes work 15+ hour days.  Before, I would try to take all the work that came in, but now I’m finally at a place where I have the option to say yes or no.   

What aspects of floral design is least expected by a typical person who may not be familiar with what you do?

 People think, “Oh, it must be so pretty and fun working with flowers.”  But I don’t think people realize how much grunt work there is and how physically demanding it can be.   It’s definitely not as glamorous as it looks and can involve some back-breaking, arthritis causing work.  

Once you bring back the flowers from the flower market, you start processing it - chopping all the stems and preparing all the buckets of waters.  That takes about 3-4 hours. A typical Wednesday morning starts at 4 or 4:30 AM and I get to the flower mart by 5. The early fish gets the goods!  I’m at warehouse for about 3 hours, scanning the whole warehouse for the best quality, best color, and best price. I drive back home and start processing them.  By 1 or 2 PM, the flowers are then ready to be designed.  I spend the rest of the day and all day Thursday and Friday designing and arranging the flowers mostly for weddings and sometimes Dohls (First Birthdays).

 

Hannah's arrangements look natural.  It looks like they were picked that way from the wild and just transplanted into a holding vessel.  But this organic look doesn't happen haphazardly.  It requires intentionally placing each stem by someone as meticulous and detailed as Hannah.  It's like how master musicians, dancers, and craftsmen make things look so effortless.  In this case, there were countless hours of back-breaking labor to create these works of beauty.

,

Oil Painter: Brian of Faces of Santa Ana

,

Meet Brian Peterson, a painter who started a passion project Faces of Santa Ana out of his encounter with the Screaming Homeless Man.  Although Brian designs cars for Kia Motors for his day job, he finds a deep sense of purpose when painting.

I feel the most alive when I’m painting.  By alive, I mean the whole time I’m painting, it’s a battle.  It’s not like “Whooo this is so fun~ I’m an artist!" It’s challenges and mistakes.  And you work with the mistakes. 50, 60 % of my paintings are mistakes. And you work with 'em.  You leave them there. You don’t try to erase ‘em. There’s no eraser with oil painting.

And I think that’s like life.   We can’t always tell if something is good or bad - we can’t discern everything.  What do you with situations that life throws at you? And that’s kinda like how painting is.  Oh that's not working, but let’s keep working. Let’s keep believing that the end goal is going to be amazing.  And that goes with all of my paintings. It never looks good half way through to me.

For Brian his faith also plays a core role in his creative work and what propels him to paint.  

Art is …

For me, art is two things.  Art is worship because when I paint, I feel like I’m connecting with God. 

Art is also love.  When I was mixing my palette yesterday, I was squeezing out the colors and thinking, “Thank you God for making this blue that I can love someone with, this red that I can love someone with.”

So if art is a means of love, and love is the most powerful force in the world, then I think art has a lot of capability of changing hearts, lives, minds, governments, perspectives.... all that stuff. So I view art as love.

What kind of “love” is Brian speaking of?

Let’s get back to the Screaming Homeless Man.  

There really was a homeless man who really screamed regularly in his neighborhood.  In fact, it was a such a regular occurrence that Matt named him the Screaming Homeless Man.  “Oh, there he goes again” was the common response to the sound.

But one night, Brian was reading Bob Goff’s Love Does on his couch.  He heard the familiar screams of the Screaming Homeless Man, but that night, it was different.  

I was reading about loving my neighbor and what it looks like to love like Jesus.  And those screams pierced into my heart. I thought “Man, that’s my neighbor. I don’t even know his name.”  I told my wife Vanessa that I had to go meet him.

Two days later I was on my way home from work on my bicycle.  I saw him so I stopped and introduced myself to him. “Hey, my name is Brian.  I’m your neighbor. I’m sorry for calling you the Screaming Homeless Man in my household. I’ve also driven by you a thousand times and I’ve never said ‘Hi.”  So here’s that intro - ‘Hello.’ He told me his name was Matt. He moved here from Kentucky to be a musician and had been homeless for over ten years.

In the midst of that something bubbled up inside me.  I had just painted the Elephant a week prior after not having painted for 8 years. It was just this moment where God was bringing the gift out of me.  I just asked, “Hey Matt, can I paint your portrait?”

I had no intention of doing anything with it.  I just wanted to paint...something...again. And I thought that his face and his story were really interesting. They inspired me.  He said, “Yes.” I posted it online and people were asking if it was for sale.

Out of that one guy that God gave me eyes for, that’s how it came about.

Since then, Brian has painted numerous portraits.  With the proceeds of the sale of the painting, he helps the subject of the painting with their specific needs.

While he has been painting for the past three years with a mission to give personal dignity and value to those who feel invisible, he is now discovering his own worth as a painter.  

An Artist’s Worth

I think I’m just discovering my worth as an artist.  I could never price my art to sell. How much do you charge for a piece of your art?  FOSA (Faces of Santa Ana) has helped me break this barrier because I’m charging money to help someone. So it makes it easier.  Previous to doing this project, I would’ve never been able to list a painting of mine for $2500. Impossible.  But because I’m helping other people, it’s justified in my heart.  

But recently, my wife’s been trying to help me understand my worth as an artist.  I’ve had these walls put up where I don’t believe that my work should be worth as much as she thinks it is (and others).  

I’m learning that God is showing me who I am to him.  He has given me this gift and so I’m learning how to step into this role to see myself as God sees me.  There are a lot of paintings I’m doing on the side that aren’t FOSA and I’ve been slowly seeing my value.  

Describe something you LOVE about what you do.

I love that my art influences people.  I love that it’s not just a pretty picture hanging on a wall that’s technically sound and perfectly painted.  I love that when people look at anything, whether it’s lines on the faces or strokes - people see stuff in it.  Because I’m creating art with the Spirit, I believe that there are supernatural things that He does with other people viewing it.  And that’s the favorite thing - waiting for those texts or Facebook messages from someone who came to a gallery or something. I love seeing how it is changing and impacting people.  

During my visit, Brian was working on his latest painting of a couple.  But for the first time, this portrait is going to be a joint effort from Brian and his wife Vanessa painting an interracial couple like themselves.  Brian is painting the man and Vanessa is painting the woman.  Brian uses a "one and done" technique where he creates a stroke with his brush and leaves it.  Vanessa uses a different technique where she blends the colors together.  "And that's ok," says Brian. 

,

Modern Calligrapher: Angi of Angelique Ink

,

Back when she started calligraphy as hobby at the age of 12, there weren’t any online classes, calligraphy communities, Etsy, or Instagram.  You certainly would not think that you could make a living doing calligraphy. Nobody ever said, “I want to be a calligrapher when I grow up!”

She started her business, Angelique Ink, in late 2009, when her husband introduced her to Etsy. Now she teaches calligraphy workshops; creates custom invitations, stationary, wall murals, logos; and sells a line of products online that all incorporate hand-written calligraphy.  Here is Angi.

Creative Process
My creative process varies depending on the type of project.  Most of the time, it starts with gathering the information from the client.  Then, I sit on it for a while in my head and let it marinate. Then at some point, I think “Oh my deadline is coming up” [laughs] and I’ll just start writing.  I have some kind of a blank canvas in front of me and lots pencils and pens and I’ll just start writing.  There’s no rhyme or reason to it. I’ll often write the word or phrase. I jot down things that come to mind and it looks like a bunch of junk on paper.  But that’s what gets the wheels turning. And then I usually put that down for a while and then I come back to it in a couple days and I’ll refine the work from there - looking for things that match or go together, looking for spaces and letters that read back into each other.

Embracing Imperfections
I like traditional styles, but find that too many rules impede my creativity which I like about my work and gives me a distinctive style.  So I stay away from being too tied to traditional forms of calligraphy in order to have the freedom to be creative.   

Breaking away from traditional scripts can sometimes look ugly or careless, so my goal is to makes these deviances look beautiful and intentional.  You embrace the imperfections. The lines move in a free and unique way like a song and dance.  Even though it’s not perfect in typical calligraphy standards, for me, there’s more room to connect emotionally with something that is relatable, emotional, free and unique.

I think that people can have emotional reactions to any art work.  In calligraphy, it can be through the way the lines look or the flow is happening or the placement of a word or line.   

Poetic Flow
I think my work has a certain poetic flow to it. [Yes!  Her lines and strokes make the words come to life!]  I do get a lot of inspiration from poetry and thinking through the emotion behind words and how that’s expressed.

I recover from creative block by going to the garage and just working with my hands in a different way than calligraphy.  So shaping a piece of wood or building something, and seeing how much detail and intricacies are in a small piece of wood - even the grain in wood - can be inspirational to me.  

[Angi takes me to her garage where she does her wood work.  She drills holes in pieces of wood that become inkwell holders for herself and her workshops.]

Comparisons + Social Media
One of the challenges for creatives is the comparison game.  Everyone struggles with wanting to be better or wanting to be like someone else.  And it's hard when you personally want to grow in your craft and are not feeling like you’re making progress.  For me, when I start feeling inadequate, I don’t spend a lot of time on social media for my personal sanity. I sit down and do the work that’s in front of me and not worry about what other people are doing.  

Social media can be a great tool.  I do use it. It's helped my business a lot, but it’s a black hole so I set up strict boundaries for myself so I don’t get caught up in it.  It’s a great way to connect with people. It can be a very affirming environment, but you get addicted to the affirmation.  And regardless of how social media makes you feel, you just need to keep working and creating.


She is constantly writing phrases and words.  So she’s come across countless wise and profound sayings.  But on her own body, she’s chosen to ink, “We’re better for all that we let in.”  Thank you for sharing your open spirit that embraces people and opportunities!