We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Dr. Marisol Santana a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Dr. Marisol thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. What do you think Corporate America gets wrong in your industry? Any stories or anecdotes that illustrate why this matters?
We may have heard Aesop’s fable “The Goose and the Golden Egg” when we were children; a cautionary tale about greed, exploiting a goose that lays golden eggs. There comes a point where many artists, designers and artisans start to feel like the exploited goose. They make the gold, but sometimes have to sell themselves short to galleries, buyers, or corporate businesses in order to survive financially.
Corporations behave as the greedy countryman who owns the gold laying goose, looking to make more and more profits at the artist’s expense. The artist that produces the gold is seen as a factory machine. Everyone and everything is expendable.
As artists, we may find ourselves compromising our individual artistry as corporate businesses want to scale our creations. While, scaling up isn’t necessary a bad thing, compromising the quality of our fine art is.
So, the question becomes: How can the fine artist or designer retain both their artistry and financial success within the corporate mainstream market?
Dr. Marisol , 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 have been an artist all my life, practicing multiple arts disciplines from a very young age. I have engaged in much soul-searching experimention, deconstructing my soul’s code, my purpose in life. After achieving my doctorate in art and art education from Columbia University- Teachers College, I went back to the basics. I went back to making things with my hands.
My jewelry and art comes from the heart. As I make it, I heal myself and become more grounded, centered, and calm. I make jewelry from my intuition. When we heal ourselves, we can heal others. I am inspired by author and Buddhist nun Pema Chödrön who teaches us to breathe in the suffering of others and breathe out healing to the world with her Tonglen meditation. This is to increase compassion within oneself.
It is within that light and spirit that I have grown my jewelry brand, Soleil Satnam (Soleil = Sun in French, Satnam = Sanskrit word for one’s highest, truest self). I heard once from a crystal therapist that healing light comes more from the light reflecting from the stones rather than from the stones themselves. My intention for my jewelry is to reflect and shine upon the inner beauty that one already has within, allowing one to express their highest, most beautiful self.
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
I have a few chronic health ailments that require me to manage my health and endure long periods of painful healing. These ailments teach me patience, similar to the patience I have to have while beading my jewelry, which can be very time consuming. What seems unpleasant and stagnant, can be very fruitful and productiive. When we think nothing is happening, alot is actually happening. Our cells regenerate, our hair grows, our organs function, and the earth turns. Perhaps this teaches us the importance of stillness, which can fuel our forward motion. As long as we are alive, something is always happening and changing. The leaves on the trees change colors, fall, and wither. The tree prepares for new leaves to sprout for the next season. We share similar processes with nature in our lives as well.
How’d you think through whether to sell directly on your own site or through a platform like Amazon, Etsy, Cratejoy, etc.
We are currently constructing an Ecommerce site with the help of Shopify.com. As our business model of creating unique fine art jewelry pieces evolves, we will have to figure out which pieces to scale for Ecommerce and which to keep as one-of-a-kind unique pieces of fine art. In order to have a global brand in this day and age, one has to have a healthy, thriving Ecommerce site. It will be interesting to see how our brick and mortar and Ecommerce platforms serve and enrich each other in the near future as our business continues to develop, especially globally. As the earth turns and evolves, so do we.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.soleilsatnam.com/
- Instagram: @soleilsatnam
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/soleilsatnam
Image Credits
Headshot by Charles Chessler