Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Joe & Emily Salazar. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Joe & Emily , 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?

We are a husband and wife team creating art using influences from the beauty and nature around us. We use found objects, bones, crystals, and all sorts of flora and fauna to create our nature art. I (Emily) was born and raised in Colorado, I grew up in the foothills and played in the mountains. I remember collecting pine cones and stones to make ornaments and wreaths, then trying to sell them to the neighbors. City kids sold lemonade, I had a pine cone stand. My husband Joe is from California but moved here in jr. high. He was the kid who built his own boom box out of a little red wagon, a car stereo and some random speakers. And that wagon bumped louder than you could imagine, that kid was turning heads down the beach where he spent most of his childhood. So we’ve both been tinkering in the art/maker world since we were kids. Now that we’re together we camp, fish hike and spend as much time outdoors as possible. We are both drawn to nature and want to bring a bit of the outdoors in through the art. We both have a bit different style in what and how we create but we definitely feed off each other and push each other. Joe brings a lot of history to his art, including reclaimed woods and metals to build his work. I use everything from vintage sheet music to fossils to dried flowers and almost everything in between to create. We try to honor the life and death of nature with making each piece beautiful and with care. We use only ethically sourced animal products and sometimes that makes it hard to get product, which is why we make a variety of different products. We want to always have something different for you, from home decor & oddities to jewelry and vintage curiosities.

Hi Joe & Emily , thanks for joining us today. Can you open up about a risk you’ve taken – what it was like taking that risk, why you took the risk and how it turned out?

Well both my husband and I took the plunge and made Rocky Mountain Punk our full time jobs in 2021. We had been doing this as just a “hobby” for years along side our regular full time jobs. We both had careers in completely different fields. I spent the beginning of my work life in retail management and most recently a body piercing artist for over the last decade. Joe was in retail management as well and spent years as a manual labor technician. Both making a comfortable living but working relentless hours and dealing with mind bending stress. So we were doing our art and making as a release and an outlet for our own sanity and doing it on the side. Well, 2020 & 2021 were a doozy in our lives. We both found ourselves without our regular/steady jobs. We spent many sleepless nights thinking and talking about every aspect of leaving the comfort of the life and jobs we had known to try and make art keep us a float. Once we made it even a possibility, just the putting it out into the universe made us realize we had no choice but to do it. We knew we couldn’t live a happy life if we hadn’t tried. We didn’t want to regret not at least trying, so we jumped in head first. Our friends,The Learned Lemur, who we tour with at the Oddities & Curiosities Expos asked us to help them open up a shop here in Denver in 2021, we helped them do build out and grand opened in August. We are now the in-house shop artist and enjoying every single second! It has all been a risk, every day is a risk when your self employed. But we love it and wouldn’t want it any other way!

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative?

It’s not all fun and games. It may seem that making art and trying to live the dream is easy. It is not. Nothing good comes easy! Every day is a struggle, one day you might make $2000+ and the next few you make $10 total, or you might not make any for weeks. You also have to sell your self, your art is a reflection of you, your heart, your soul, it’s a peek inside. And putting that out there for others to see, judge and criticize & love is hard. But when they love it, when they connect with something you made with your heart it makes it all worth it.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

Being able to spend this time with my husband. He is my work partner and my life partner and there is no one I trust more than him, so he makes the perfect teammate! And being available and around for my family. I can adjust my schedule for my family.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.rockymountainpunk.com
• Instagram: @rockymountainpunk
• Facebook: Rocky Mountain Punk
• Other: Rocky Mountain Punk is located inside the Learned Lemur Oddities Shop at: 2220 E. Colfax Ave Denver, CO 80206