We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Michelle Janas. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Michelle below.

Michelle , thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.

I have been so fortunate to have been chosen to work on so many meaningful pieces over the years, but perhaps one of the most meaningful and challenging pieces to date, was a ceremonial piece for a wedding. The couple reached out to me during the height of the pandemic not sure when or if they would be able to set a date for their big day, but they knew they wanted to commemorate the day with a meaningful piece. Being naturalists, they had accumulated an amazing collection of moth/butterfly wings, feathers and pressed botanicals throughout the time they had been together. They brought me the bulk of their beautiful collection and gave me the freedom to “go nuts.”
I am a bit of a nature lover myself and most of my designs stem from being outdoors as it is, so this project was truly a dream come true for me. I worked with the couple and came up with a luna moth design with overlapping “rings” to symbolize their new beginning, and worked in lots of their stunning wings and feathers as well.
It is a piece I am so proud of, and I am honored that the couple trusted me so unequivocally.

Michelle , love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

Well, M.EYEimages has changed a lot over the years, as have I. The one thing that has remained consistent, is my desire to create. It’s just inherent. Since I can remember, I have been collecting little treasures from nature….the woods, the ocean, you name it. My grandmother taught me how to find sharks teeth on the beaches in Florida, my mom helped me to collect puff balls and birch polypores (long before I knew what they were called), to make wreaths, and my dad helped me figure out how to drill holes through big rocks that I just couldn’t go home without so I could turn them into cairn lamps.
I’ve been through many mediums throughout the years (film, digital photography, painting, metalwork, etc), but around 2012/2013 I found glass. I was apprenticing for a woman who did framing and restorations. Truth be told, I was most interested in learning the magic behind restoring old artwork. Unfortunately for me (or maybe fortunately), she needed so much help with custom framing requests, I wound up cutting A LOT of glass.
Around the same time, my mom had taken up stained glass as a hobby. She encouraged me to try making a few small things with the tools she had acquired since I was already familiar with how to cut glass.
I chose to start with earrings, so from the get go, I decided to work solely with lead free solder (which is unusual in the stained glass world). Things sort of just grew from there. It was a side hustle at first.
I started entering some small, local markets to try to offset my costs for supplies, and I just became more and more fueled to grow. I became increasingly more interested in the craft itself… how things worked/why some things didn’t, how to best cut curves, how to make stained glass look modern, how to incorporate natural elements into my designs, etc.
In 2018, I started exploring mosaics. I was getting married and wanted to make a special piece to stand out for the big day, so I made 3 foot tall letters that spelled out love in glass. I used mirror so we could catch some cool reflections of the location and the people there.
In 2019, I found half of a windsurfing board on the side of the highway on my way back from work one day. I was preparing for my first gallery show and all of a sudden it hit me. I turned the car around, picked up the “trash” and brought it home to clean up. It was going to make a perfect mosaic “Jaws.” That’s when I started reclaiming old surfboards to turn into large, mosaic wall art.
My craft and my knowledge base continue to grow, and I have no intention to stop anytime soon. For now I am feeling content in stained glass and mosaics and finding ever new ways to put my own spin on it. If anything I would say my passion continues to grow exponentially as time goes on. I put every ounce of my being into M.EYEimages and every client that trusts me with a piece gets 100 percent of me. I am a perfectionist to a fault at times, but my clients can feel confident that I will not be turning out something I am not proud of.
I think my drive sets me apart. I love challenges, I love learning new things, and I am looking forward to what the future holds.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

Like many, the pandemic really threw me a curveball and made me pivot before I felt like I was ready for it. I felt like I was just finding my footing and then everything fell apart. I wasn’t sure if it was the end or not, but I continued to explore and create and make. Then Patrick Murphy, a local gallery owner I had worked with previously, reached out. We decided to try a virtual gallery show to see what would happen. People “showed up” if you will. It gave me hope and the courage to keep moving forward. It made me feel like people needed art in those scary times. I came up with some of my favorite pieces during that time. I don’t wish for anything like it to happen again, but it did have a weird way of allowing me to create more freely in some ways.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

Gosh, I think it’s all rewarding. It’s quite literally a dream come true. I remember going into college thinking “artist” wasn’t a realistic goal, but I was feeling so lost and unhappy after my first year that I signed up for a drawing class just to have something to look forward to. I wound up taking one or two art classes a semester for the rest of my college career and my only regret was not changing my major and taking every art class I could. Being able to pay bills and make a living off of making things with my hands is really all the reward I need, but what really catapults it all into another dimension is when people tell me something I created speaks to them. Whether it reminds them of a loved one, or of a memory, or maybe they share a love of bugs and ferns and pretty flowers… or maybe one of my pieces just makes them laugh. It all feeds me. It feeds my drive, feeds my soul, keeps me going.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.meyeimages.etsy.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/m.eyeimages/

Image Credits
Natasha Meehan