We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Marion Fague-bass a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Marion, thanks for joining us today. Do you wish you had waited to pursue your creative career or do you wish you had started sooner?

I was raised in an artistic environment. My mother was a musician and music educator, like her mother before her. My father was an actor and an educator. I grew up studying ballet, piano, violin, and was always involved in chorus, choir and theater. I tried my hand at painting and other visual arts, but as far back as I can remember I wanted to be an actor, and that’s where I focused my energies growing up.

A wild adventure my senior year of high school radically altered the trajectory of my life for the next few years. A year living in a small city in central Mexico convinced me that I wanted a career that would take me around the world and allow me to connect with people of all ethnicities and cultures. For over a decade I followed an exciting path that allowed me to live and study in several foreign countries as I worked toward a career in government foreign service. At the age of 30 I found myself in Washington D.C. studying for a master’s degree at Georgetown University. I had reached the summit and suddenly realized it wasn’t where I wanted to be! But where did I want to be? I felt like the acting train had left the station, but the writing train had arrived. While in D.C. I actually wrote two novels! So for the next minute or two, writing became my purpose in life.

But then life happened.

Marriage and children can be rather consuming, and not long after my declaration of my plans to become a bestselling novelist my life was taken over by other people. Don’t get me wrong, my children are my greatest achievement, and I could leave this earth today feeling proud and happy with my life if only for those two remarkable humans I brought into this world. But you know how they say you can’t take care of someone else if you don’t take care of yourself? I definitely fell into that category of not taking care of myself for nearly a quarter of a century.

Like my parents before me, I turned to education as a career. I truly believe that being a teacher is the most important job there is. As the adage goes, there would be no other jobs if there were no teachers. I, however, spent thirty years trying to live up to that high estimation, and I always felt I fell short. Oh, I was an okay teacher and I put everything I had into it, but I come from a long line of outstanding educators who set the bar so high I feared I didn’t measure up.

Teaching is a job that takes everything you’ve got. My creative energies poured out into lessons that I hoped would engage and inspire my students. But it’s a never-ending job, an endless supply of papers to grade and lessons to plan. Add to that raising my two precious humans. There just wasn’t much left of me by the end of the day. Keep that up for 25 years and you get worn pretty thin. I’m not complaining, mind you. Just tired!

As the kids got older and more independent, and the light of retirement had appeared at the end of the tunnel, I knew it was time for ME. But what? On a whim I took a beading class at a local craft store and I was hooked. (In the jewelry-making world we know beading as the “Gateway Drug.”) Twenty-five years of pent up creative juices came bursting out like a pressure cooker with a crack. It wasn’t long before I had an Etsy shop full of my high quality beaded jewelry. But that wasn’t enough, I needed to up my game. Eventually I found a metalsmithing class at a local art center and true love blossomed. Two and a half years from retirement, I knew I had found my second career. But life seemed to have other plans. It took another twelve years to achieve my dream of having my own studio and real-live business.

So, back to the question if I wish I had started my creative career sooner or later? Definitely sooner. I can’t regret the choices I’ve made or the things that have happened to me because without all of the experiences of my life, I wouldn’t be the person I am or where I am today. But I am so fulfilled personally now as a full-time creative that if I could go back and have a conversation with my 17-year-old self, I would encourage her to follow her original passion instead of always taking the safe route. If I were starting over, I would have made the move to L.A. after high school and taken my shot at acting. And if that didn’t work out, I would have taken writing and painting classes. I would have turned my back on the safe route and embraced the starving artist life. Maybe my creative career would have been very different had I given my life to it from the beginning, but if I could have been experiencing the happiness and satisfaction I have now all of my adult life, no question I would go for it.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I own Fingernail Moon Jewelry LLC. I specialize in creating unique artisan jewelry crafted with traditional metalsmithing techniques and precious metal clay. Drawing inspiration from nature and bohemian aesthetics, each piece is thoughtfully designed to be organic and one of a kind, reflecting a deep connection to artistry and individuality.

I have over fifteen years of experience in metalsmithing, and have learned from many amazing artisans and teachers. About eight years ago I took a deep dive into precious metal clay through an intensive course, earning my senior instructor certificate from Art Clay, one of the original creators of precious metal clay. I am constantly improving my skills and expanding my horizons through classes and workshops in many varied techniques.

I sell my jewelry online, in person at fine art festivals around central Florida, and from my studio at FAVO. FAVO, Faith Arts Village Orlando, is a community of artist studios in a converted ’50s era motel in Downtown Orlando. The public is welcome to come visit all of the artists at our monthly Art Stroll the first Friday and Saturday evenings of every month. (Shameless plug…come see me in Studio 237, tell me you read this article and I’ll give you a discount on any purchase!)

I am never happier than when a piece of my jewelry completes someone’s story. In these difficult times I sometimes question if maybe I should be using my golden years for some more altruistic purpose. But then I find out the story of the new forever home of one of my pieces. Like the note I received from a gentleman thanking me for the necklace he purchased. It was a pendant featuring a fossil of a fern. His wife’s name was Fern and she was a breast cancer survivor and the necklace was a reminder of her enduring spirit! Another lady purchased a necklace that featured a colorful piece of surfite. It was to honor a dear friend who was a professional surfer and had tragically died in the prime of his life. Of course, not all art tells a heart-warming story. Sometimes it just plain and simple puts a smile on your face. And when a piece of my jewelry speaks to someone and brings a smile to their face, it makes me smile, too!

But the side of my business that has really taken off and brings me tremendous joy is teaching. I offer classes in metalsmithing and metal clay, both for beginners and for the more experienced. I also offer workshops for special projects and in other methods of jewelry-making such as Tiffany Method Soft Solder, Pearl Knotting, Beading, Leather Knotting and more. I have “Date Night” experiences, “Girls’ Night Out” experiences, and other special events. You can schedule a special private event for any occasion such as a bridal shower, a birthday party, or anything you want to celebrate with a fun afternoon or evening making your own unique jewelry.

My mother, a music educator, believed in the power of music. She believed that EVERYONE should sing, not worry about how good or bad one’s voice is, just sing! One of the things I observed while living in Mexico was that whenever there is a gathering of a few people, somebody would magically produce a guitar and very soon everyone would be singing! And dancing! They never cared who was watching, how silly they sounded or looked, they just had a good time. I suppose we could get scientific and talk about dopamine and stuff, but the bottom line is that making music, and dancing, feels good. Creating feels good. In this country we are taught from an early age that, while we can go to museums and be all hoighty-toighty and art appreciative, but actually creating art ourselves is frivolous. If you want to sing, do it in the shower. If you want to paint, do it in the garage on the weekend. But focus on a “real” job. I nearly got booted out of a supper club once when I said that I believed that people should follow their passion. “NO!!!” was unanimously thrown back in my face so profoundly that I literally fell back a step! Well, whatever my supper-mates thought, I still believe that. And I also believe very strongly that every one of us has creative juices bubbling away deep inside, and we will never be totally satisfied unless we find an outlet for them. Anything! After being bottled up for many years of teaching and child-rearing, my first creative outlet was scrapbooking! I went after scrapbooking with a vengeance. It was a bit like scrapbooking was okay because, while it was a creative outlet for me, I was doing something that included the whole family and would be cherished by the whole family. Whatever. It was fun and it filled my creative needs. We all need to find something, some creative niche that will soothe our souls.

And more suprising to me than to anyone else, I have taken up my mother’s anthem. When I retired from public school teaching, I really intended dedicate my time and energy to creating. But the universe had other plans. After taking metalsmithing classes for a few years at the Art and History Museums of Maitland, I was asked to start teaching. I was more than hesitant to accept the job. I really didn’t think I had the knowledge or skills to try to teach others. But it turned out that I did. And I really enjoyed it! Seems you can take the teacher out of the classroom, but you can’t take the teacher out of the person! In short order I was teaching several metalsmithing and metal clay classes and routinely selling out. After the Art Center retired its jewelry program, I took my classes with me. I taught out of my home studio for awhile, then the lucky day came that I was offered a studio at FAVO. Now I have my cozy forever home and am running a full schedule of classes. The teacher in me has transitioned nicely from Spanish classes to jewelry classes! I have developed a thorough curriculum for beginning classes so students are confident and competent to progress. I provide detailed and comprehensive instruction at all levels and students appreciate the careful and personalized attention they receive. I have found tremendous passion in sharing my love of what I do with others. My favorite thing is taking someone from a blank slate to a confident jewelry maker. I am the most proud and excited each time a student finishes a piece and their eyes light up with pride and a sense of accomplishment.

Shameless plug number two: If you think you might like to try your hand at jewelry-making, follow me on Eventbrite to stay up to date with my full schedule.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

My journey to becoming a full-time creative has been long and convoluted. If someone had told me when I was young that I would be a small-business owner at the age of 68, designing and creating artisan jewelry and teaching, yeah, that would have given me a good laugh. And once I retired from my career in education and determined that this was the second career path I wanted to pursue, I thought it was just a matter of “make it so.” But my journey was one of two-steps-forward-one-step-back, or very often one-step-forward-two-steps-back. It so often seemed that every time I thought I was on the precipice of actually achieving my goals, I would tumble backwards. Along the way one day I was talking to my brother, who happens to be a Buddhist Master, and I was spilling out my woes. I said that I felt like the Universe was toying with me, letting me believe that things were going well then BAM!, doors get slammed in my face. I believed the Universe really didn’t want me to achieve my dream. My brother looked at me and said, “Maybe the Universe is asking you how badly do you want that dream?” That quiet question really hit home. It became my mantra, “How badly do I want this?” Every time things got tough, I would ask myself if I wanted it badly enough to push on through. After nearly 15 years of pushing through, and finally being on the verge of realizing my dream, I hit the biggest obstacle yet. After I finally got into my “forever” studio and moved forward with all the legalities of becoming a legitimate business, I got slammed so hard I almost threw in the towel. When I started the process I knew enough to know that I didn’t know anything about setting up or running a business. So I enlisted the help of the Small Business Administration and had an expert literally sit with me and walk me step by step through the process. So with all my T’s crossed and I’s dotted, I took one of the last steps of applying for my city tax permit (occupational license). Due to a misunderstanding (of the term metalsmith), everything blew up. Things got so bad, I thought I was going to be shut down completely, and worse, that there could be serious backlash for my beloved FAVO. I went into a deep depression and seriously considered selling off all of my tools and walking away. Then the words came back to me, “How badly do I want this?” I thought about how hard I had been working for so long and I knew I wanted it badly enough to push through this setback, too. And lo and behold, everything started falling into place. I made it! No, my business has not been an overnight success, but it exists and it is moving forward. Each time I step into my studio a sense of accomplishment envelopes me. And it all comes down to the fact that I wanted it badly enough.

How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?

I believe that this country has taken a wrong turn in our philosophy of education. For years we have compared ourselves and our education system to other world leaders. We have realized that we need to up our game to keep up, and from that came STEM: Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. I agree that in this high tech world, we need to excell in these areas. But it should be STEAM, adding ART. Art is generally relegated to entertainment, and basically a frivolous activity. But there is growing scientific evidence that shows how creating art of any kind is essential to our physical, psychological and emotional health and well-being. Art and music therapy are gaining widespread acceptance as an effective treatment for mental health. In terms of brain development, it has been shown that early organized training in visual and performing arts promotes brain plasticity, improving cognitive flexibility and problem-solving skills. Children who study art consistently perform better in language, math and science as they get older. Music, dance and art classes should be as important in our school curriculums as math and science. Did you know that the top tech universities, like MIT, often offer dual majors in technology oriented areas such as engineering with music? So if you want your child to get into one of these prime schools, let them be in marching band!

So what can we do as a society to best support artists and the arts? Start early. Teach our children to love art in any form, and encourage them to release their creative energies. But what about those of us who are already “past our prime?” Well I say it’s never too late. I take pleasure in the knowledge that even at my advanced age, every time I practice my art I am creating new neural networks that will help counter the old, worn out ones!

So, yes, get creative! As a society we need to encourage participation in the arts of all kinds. And we can support our creative ecosystem in many easy ways. For example:

1) In this day and age of high tech, it’s easy to find your favorite artists on social media. Find them and follow them, engage with their posts and share them with your friends. You’re on Instagram or Facebook anyway, it’s free and easy to help out artists that way.
2) Spread the word. Share art you love on Pinterest or any social media (be sure to tag them), tell your friends, any way you can think of to let others know.
3) Be sure to leave good reviews for the artists on their websites, their social media accounts, on Google, Yelp or wherever else you might have found them.
4) Buy the art! Often we find original art to be expensive, but we fail to recognize that we are not only paying for the time and materials to create this original work, but also all of the overhead (studio rental, utilities, etc), and the years of training and practice. Appreciate this and support the artists by buying the original painting, sculpture or jewelry and understand that your are investing in so much more than just a pretty picture.
5) Go to shows and exhibitions. Engage with the artists. You’ll not only be showing them your support, but you’ll meet some pretty interesting people and find some really cool art!
6) Hire creatives as much as possible. Have a live musician at your next event instead of recorded music. Have an original mural painted in the nursery or in your office. Have an original piece of jewelry made to commemorate a special event. One of the coolest things I’ve seen is having an artist creating a real time painting at a special event like a wedding.
7) Donate. There are many organizations like United Arts that support arts in the community. Arts organizations not only provide opportunities for artists to practice and share their craft, educate the community on the value of art, but they also enrich our communities with vibrant culture and arts. A small monthly donation automatically deducted from your paycheck goes a long way. You can donate your time and talents by volunteering or teaching classes. You can also donate materials such as art supplies or equipment, or donate money or services to help cover operational costs.
8) Support arts activities and neighborhood beautification projects that help unify communities. Most will agree that art bridges ethnic, racial, religious and other divisions and helps us understand others better.

There are endless ways to support individual artists or the creative community. By actively engaging with local art scenes and promoting the work of artists, you can help create a thriving environment that celebrates creativity and artistic expression.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://fingernailmoonjewelry.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fingernailmoonjewelry/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FingernailMoonDesign
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marion-fague-bass-66257711
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/fingernail-moon-jewelry-orlando?osq=Fingernail+Moon+Jewelry
• Other: https://fingernailmoondesign.etsy.com/