We recently connected with Hank and Traci Bowman and have shared our conversation below.
Hank and Traci , looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?
I (Traci) retired from the US Air Force in 2020; when we started the business we were surrounded by other military people and we created a lot of promotion and retirement gifts. My husband (Hank) taught himself how to make pieces others wanted. We have created American Flags, coin holders (military members collect coins from places they have been and often display all, or their most meaningful coins. When I was a squadron commander, we didn’t have funds to purchase awards one year and my husband created one of a kind plaques for each annual award winner. We spent years crating pieces for our military community and really just began branching out when I retired and moved away from a military community. The evolution has been fun as now we get to create for a wedding gift, or a bourbon collector; and each evolution allows us to meet and connect to a new community.
Hank and Traci , 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?
My name is Traci, and I served in the United States Air Force for 27 years. I met my husband, a former Marine, while stationed at Tyndall Air Force Base, Florida. We fell in love, got married, and raised four beautiful children together. As my career took me overseas, Hank left his government job to be a full time stay at home dad; giving our children the support and stability they needed. As our kids grew and left for college, Hank had more time to be creative. He was and is a lifetime DIYer, so beginning this journey wasn’t a huge leap. We officially began the business in California when we saw the beauty in wine barrels and what some local artists were doing with them. We decided to create unique pieces to honor our fellow military members. For the first year we only created pieces for military promotions, retirements, and going-away gifts; then branched out to local fairs and festivals as a way to support the community. We were constantly learning how to do more with the parts of the barrel and enjoying the time spent together creating.
In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?
When we moved to our forever home, we chose a small town and knew our business would change as we would not be close to a military base. We were hoping to find businesses who celebrated artists as we had found in Northern California. What we found exciting about our town was although it is small, it still valued local artists by having Art on the Sidewalk, farmers’ markets; annual Pioneer Days as well as many of the local businesses have relationships with artists to display their pieces. I think it’s easy for all towns to allow artists to display their work and it’s important to have fairs and festivals to showcase local artists. It’s not difficult to display local artwork in a restaurant, store, local city building; and I believe it helps unite cities and towns.
What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?
For us, it’s the ability to make something beautiful for someone. We often ask our clients to send us a photo of their piece once it’s in their home. There is something so rewarding seeing something you created in someone’s home.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: @lonewolfbarrelart
- Facebook: lonewolfbarrelart