We recently connected with Diana Marshall and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Diana thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. What was the most important lesson/experience you had in a job that has helped you in your creative career?

At one of my prior jobs, I was a business efficiency expert for a government contracting company working on Navy and DoD classified and top-secret projects. I learned that organization and efficiency are essential to any business. The smaller the workspace you have to work in the more highly organized and creative you need to get with your workspace. If you do a repetitive task enough, you should map out your steps and organize the room around the task not the task around the room. So, whenever I clean and reorganize my craft room, I do my best to make more efficient to save time and money in the long run. If i have to search for materials and waste time that time is actually money. I invested in lots of furniture designed for crafters to maximize the storage and organization in my craft room.

Diana, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I truly put my heart and soul into each piece. I love to create functional art with my resin pieces. My colorful art is so cheerful it brings happiness to any room. I make stained glass, mosaics, abstracts with acrylic and alcohol inks, plus my resin art. I am most proud of when customers come back and tell me how much the item bought from me meant to themselves or whomever they gifted the piece too. I made a few commissions last year and my favorite one was a floral dominos set with a matching floral charcuterie. The client plays dominos with her elderly mother and wanted to get a custom set of dominos with flowers that matched the kind of flowers her mother had in the garden when she was little, and her mother was healthy enough to still garden. So, I made a lovely dominos set that featured 3 types of flowers her mother used to grew. The matching charcuterie board with the extra flowers was an add on I suggested based on how she said her mom and her eat snacks while they play. She gave the dominos in November for the mother birthday and saved the matching charcuterie board for Christmas. I love that my art is going to be cherish my people to create lasting family memories and evoke old memories from days long ago like her mother’s old garden.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

For me art has always been a form of therapy. I started making art when a therapist suggested I get hobby. It had become my go to thing to do when I needed to make sense of the world. So, in Summer 2019 I went through some really bad domestic violence, waiting for the felony trial circumstances had me reverting to my hobbies more than I ever had before. Covid hit in March 2020 and All I could do to distract myself was create my art. Covid was hard on my mental health. My abuser/ex was also my childhood neighbor. I was still living next-door to his family members while waiting for the trial. I couldn’t relax before the trial, so I decided to make a big change and move to a more remote area from Cape Cod to Downeast Maine. I had spent 10 years taking care of my elderly parents, so I hadn’t worked in a decade. I knew to be successful it had to be on my terms because of my health issues and I needed to make art because it was my lifeline the only thing that cheered me up at my lowest point in my life. I moved a few months before the trial. Signed up for craft fairs After the trial where I finally felt I got justice I started selling my art. It’s been the biggest confidence boost to sell my art after all the traumas. I couldn’t exist or make sense at life without making my art. So, it’s great to get to share that with people and have them love it and use my art in their house.

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can provide some insight – you never know who might benefit from the enlightenment.

I feel like non creatives have a hard time understanding the calling it is to create that it is the whole you. If I don’t spend time creating, I just don’t feel happy. I will do anything to rearrange my life to I can spend more and more time making art. It’s part of my soul my life essence to create. Working a soul wrenching job just to pay the bills would depress me, especially if am too tired to create. I need to create. It’s not a hobby I pick up when bored. It’s an obsession. When I am in my studio creating it doesn’t feel like work. I am just figuring out how to get the visions in my head and making them real. If I am not in the studio, I am thinking about what I am going to make next adding to my list of future projects. I think about how to maximize the efficiency of my studio. I am thinking about marketing my art. I want my life to my work and my work to be my art so i never feel like I am working a day in my life.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.vixenhollowarts.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/vhamaine
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/vhamaine
• Other: www.tiktok.com/vhamaine

Image Credits
image credits to “The Bearded Mainer” Photographer Find Shaun Crockett on Instagram and Facebook