We recently connected with Jodi Miller and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Jodi thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We’d love to hear the backstory behind a risk you’ve taken – whether big or small, walk us through what it was like and how it ultimately turned out.
I don’t know if I would have ever thought, “I’m a risk-taker,” but looking back over the years, I think that I, along with my husband, have taken a lot of risks—driven by vision, hope and faith. In 1998, we got married and moved from Idaho to Denver, CO with nothing but our college diplomas and hearts full of dreams. For two years, my husband toured in a rock-band before we moved again to Seattle to further follow our creative dreams in music and design. I knew I wanted to work as a textile designer at Tommy Bahama before we ever even left Colorado, and within a year, I had contracted at Eddie Bauer and then soon was working, full-time, in the Art Dept. at Tommy Bahama’s headquarters with a dream job of painting flowers and mermaids as a CAD artist and Textile Designer. After we had our son, we started dreaming, again, of being closer to family and living in Boise, and when our baby turned three in 2006, we packed up our car and headed home to Idaho, bought our first home just before the housing market crash of 2008 and I worked as a freelance artist for Tommy Bahama, Lands End, 7 Gypsies, and another lifestyle brand that was located in Nashville, TN called Two Old Hippies. Our daughter was born in 2008 and I worked part-time as a freelance designer and full-time mommy…again…dream job!
When our daughter started school, I started thinking about what life would be like if God was my client…? My husband was fully on-board and said that i could let my current clients know that I was letting them go and get up, get ready and go to my studio every morning and pray and see what God wants me to create. He said, “If you make something and you are supposed to give it away, just give it away. Don’t worry about the money part, just pray and see what You feel like God wants you to create.” The idea of possibly not contributing financially was a difficult mind-shift to embrace, but I did what my husband said…for two weeks straight, I got up, got ready and went into my studio with my journal and just prayed all day until the kids got home from school. For 10 business days I created nothing, but that third Monday in the studio, it was like a waterfall of ideas and designs started pouring out! I wrote 7 poems, created prototypes, mock-ups, I designed 24 greeting cards—it was such an amazing process of waiting on God, believing for inspiration, and then tangibly seeing a release of ideas come to fruition that I ended up calling, Beautiful Words. And the ideas, designs, and art just poured out for weeks!
Beautiful Words allowed for so many amazing opportunities that I almost can’t believe took place. It allowed me to lead refugee women’s groups and teens in art-healing type retreats and projects, it allowed me to create an interactive gallery exhibition at one of our local Universities with a month-long solo show, it allowed me to engage in community pop-ups, and I was able to create relationships with local businesses that have been a blessing to me and my creative endeavors for the last 8 years here in Boise.
When Beautiful Words grew into a full-time jewelry business, I was engraving vintage key necklaces that dawned beautiful words, intricate designs and affirmations that I sold locally and in various stores and boutiques nationally, I started dreaming, literally dreaming at night, about painting. I would mix paints and paint the paintings in my dreams while I was sleeping and wake up with these painting ideas already completed in my imagination. One, two, three finished paintings in my dreams…until I had a dozen paintings that I was now stewarding in my mind, journal and heart and I just couldn’t let it go. I’d go to engrave a key and think, “I should be painting those paintings.” I began feeling so compelled to paint that I would say, “I’m not going to engrave another key until I paint.” But I would find everything and anything else to do around the house and wouldn’t paint…I think I was overwhelmed with the thought of not being able to do what I had now stewarded in my heart for months. Fast-forward two, three years…at this point, I’ve told everyone, I’m not doing the jewelry anymore and I sold all my inventory to a local gift shop and sent everyone there if they wanted any of what was left to purchase and I began dabbling in paint. At the time, I was leading a group of creatives at my church in a rotation of creating during worship on Sundays, during services. Anytime I was on the rotation, I would attempt to paint my dream paintings and though I got more brave and courageous, I knew my skill level wasn’t where it needed to be to bring my dream paintings to reality. I handed off the leadership role at church and started working part-time as the pastoral assistant at my church and painting as much as I could in the hours I wasn’t at the office.
Nine months into working part-time at my church, I took a two-day vacation and signed up for an online painting workshop with Milan Art Studio. It was awesome! Three days of painting and watching others paint and teach with excellence and everything they were saying was resonating so much with where my heart had been dreaming about what it would look like to be a full-time artist painting my dream paintings with skill. Enrollment for their college-level, year-long, Milan Art Academy was opening up and I signed up and with the guidance of my solopreneur coach and friend (Diane Gibbs), I took a risk again. I recognized that I had tied my calling/destiny to within the four-walls of my church and began realizing that God was actually calling me outside the church into the marketplace as a full-time, professional artist. So, I quit my job and began painting full-time. I’m working to complete Milan Art Academy and am growing leaps and bounds in my skills and studio habits as an artist. It’s exciting and requires a lot of faith in what I feel I am hearing from God and for what I believe the future holds as an artist. It’s facing resistance and having breakthroughs, confronting faulty mind-sets that hold me back and pushing through and growing as a person and a person of faith doing her best to live out the call on her life…it’s a dream job!
Jodi, 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?
Dreaming, praying, believing and taking risks is what got me into the discipline of painting and visual arts.
I create mixed-media oil paintings that carry narratives that exploit light, color and expression and act as a bridge that illuminates true identities. Because I have more than 20 years of experience in design and textile design, I am able to provide commissioned pieces for the home & business that can incorporate any color-scheme and style that fits the needs of the space—pieces that, all the while, question current realities and help to define a future reality of hope and light that the collector can step into every time they see their piece.
In all that I do and create, I want to be a passionate creative that challenges, stretches and bends reality for a better tomorrow.
What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?
One rewarding aspect of being an artist or creative is how art can create a bridge to another person’s heart and soul and establish relationship with them. I love how art can be a catalyst to dreaming for more—inviting the viewer into what their identity as an overcomer can look like. I love how art can be motivated by the vulnerable, authentic love of the artist and can then release that love and hope to help create a more beautiful future for others.
The MOST rewarding aspect of being an artist or creative is how art and the act of creating allows me to talk with God. I’m struck at how many deep conversations I have with Him while in the studio. I’ve been convicted and invited to right wrongs. I’ve felt overwhelming peace. I’ve been undone with gratitude and I’ve been compelled to slow down and be content and quiet, no matter what’s going on around me. God is so multi-faceted in how it pleases Him to meet with us and speak to us in the deep places of our hearts. Painting reminds me to not limit the love and eagerness of God to be in a dynamic and loving relationship with me and the world around me.
In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?
i think the best thing that can create support for artists, creatives, and a thriving creative ecosystem, is for artists to overcome their fears, embrace their value and charge pricing that reflects that value. I believe under-pricing and under-valuing yourself as an artist creates dysfunction between artist and collector. I think that recognizing that you can sell your art at a price that reflects your value as an artist, educates society to also value art and artists and everyone benefits.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/darlingbirdstudios
- Facebook: https://m.facebook.com/jodi.miller.568632