We were lucky to catch up with Hannah Love & Rendon Foy recently and have shared our conversation below.
Hannah Love & Rendon Foy, appreciate you joining us today. Can you talk to us about how you learned to do what you do?
We are always learning how to do what we do! We’re licensed massage therapists, and we met each other at Carolina Massage Institute in Hillsborough in 2019. This education and practice informs a lot of our art. Even with the botanical art, we are always thinking of human bodies and plant bodies – our selves – in nature, and that inspires the reuse of “trash” in our creations. We are always teaching ourselves new skills whenever we get a fresh idea of something we want to create. We also have to learn all kinds of methods never before tried for building and making things with materials that are not traditional art supplies. Obstacles generally tend to be having limited space and access to the right tools, but that just helps keep us really creative about finding solutions. It is always a true delight connecting with people through our art as the weird, wacky bodies we are in this world and occasionally using our backgrounds to offer some education. So connection really is at the heart of what we do and why.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
People want beautiful things that don’t hurt the Earth, and that’s a want we hope to fill, especially for others interested in anatomy and botany. We aim to keep our prices affordable and are open to trades. We are really proud of making a living doing the things we love while also keeping them accessible. We have both always been artsy & sciency people, so the separate paths we each took converged perfectly when we met. Rendon is amazing at building (our screenprinting screens, our frames), educational art, tech stuff, and keeping us on track. Hannah is excellent at big picture ideas and dreams for the future, gorgeous organic designs, and generally jiving with the public.
We would LOVE to see our anatomical artwork on the walls of healthcare facilities, offering visual interest, education, and connection in spaces where that support is really necessary and relevant. We also want to provide other bodyworkers in the community with high quality skin care products in refilled containers that they can feel proud to use.
When we make a piece of art that doesn’t seem to sell for a long time, we have learned that it is waiting for the person out there who needs it. For a beautiful recent example, an old screen of a left forearm had been around for months; at a market, a person who had had their left arm amputated just 3 weeks earlier saw it, and their partner yelled, “Oh my gosh, it’s your arm!” Many people who connect with our art have had some kind of trauma or illness related to the body part they see. We both have some interesting chronic pain and health issues which feels therapeutic to get out there in our art.
How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?
Both of us have had to pivot in work and life. Hannah struggled with untreated PMDD throughout their adolescence and adulthood. In college, they were always obsessed with both art and health sciences, and then quit to be a single mom interning at organic farms with their baby. Learning to garden and be close to the earth in that way was deeply healing and influenced them profoundly. They worked at raising their kids and thinking about someday going back to school, or finding a way to make a living doing something they loved, but always thought they would need to wait until their kids grew up and moved away to spend money and time on anything besides the kids. Then in 2017, they got a stage 3 cancer diagnosis, which made their whole world view pivot. Hannah decided they had waited long enough to do the things that made them happy, so they decided to let go of pretending to be heteronormative, & also started going to massage therapy school, where they met their beautiful spouse, Rendon, who has encouraged Hannah’s growth in all areas of life. Hannah is now joyfully sucking the marrow out of life with their family, relaxing more every day into the stream of chaos that carries us all along. On the way to massage therapy, Rendon also had to pivot out of their own path in grad school, where they studied the body and representation but were often let down by the lack of connection they could find to the world outside of the ivory tower. That was also a time of discovering how disconnected they were from their own body, the pain that can cause, and the necessity of moving and being in addition to thinking and doing. That is a lesson they are still learning and happy to share with bodywork clients and those who appreciate and create visual work especially in the anatomical sphere.
In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?
I think society could start looking at beauty and creativity as something useful in the world. A beautiful experience, sight, smell, sound, or feeling that has no end but itself holds the same importance as a grueling task that brings one closer to some goal. Like the soft, slippery, myelin creating possibility for leaps and bounds of electricity to spark through nerve pathways, and the muscles and bones of the skeletal system, all the parts of our bodies are basically made up of the same tissue components in varying ratios and concentrations. We need every part, every different formulation and expression to create an entire body. Not one piece is more important than another. Even vestigial organs have poetic beauty and education to provide us. One human’s trash is another human’s treasure – and sometimes the work that goes into reworking that trash, especially into a form that can be appreciated as beauty, may prove more valuable than some treasures.
Contact Info:
- Website: Myoflorae.com
- Instagram: @myoflorae
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/myoflorae