We were lucky to catch up with Soren & Helen recently and have shared our conversation below.

Soren &, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today How did you learn to do what you do? Knowing what you know now, what could you have done to speed up your learning process? What skills do you think were most essential? What obstacles stood in the way of learning more?

The jewelry we create stemmed out of other loves. Helen and I have always been treasure hunters of sorts and spend a lot of time in natural areas. On nearly every little adventure something amazing is found, whether it be delicious edible mushrooms, an arrowhead, someone’s dropped money, a crazy rock, a rattlesnake sighting, or some other wonder, the list goes on. We look for treasure in unnatural areas too, you just never know what you’re going to run into in this beautiful realm.

I’ve also always wanted to find a portal back to the stone age. So I’ve been long interested in primitive skills, including hunting and fishing. In my thirties, while living in Virginia, I met people who were into primitive skills and they invited me to rendezvous gatherings. I met people who liked the same stuff I did at these gatherings and many of them had amazing skills. I learned how to tan deer hides in a traditional manner, and learned all about fire making, flint knapping (I am not good at it, but love the craft), foraging wild foods, preserving and cooking food, and much more. I also met rock guys, geology minded folks, who knew a lot about rocks, arrowheads, and other artifacts that can be found most everywhere. It really expanded my mind. Plus they were a lot of fun, some good parties around big camp fires drumming until late at night. Wild times.

Helen had gone to art school in Santa Monica and discovered she was good with her hands at making things. She loved the process of making and learning about different materials.

We moved to Ojai from Virginia, and one day I was in an Ojai riverbed, looking around as I do, and I started finding some cool stones. I thought to myself, why does everyone want just gold and silver and shiny stuff? You know, crows and crazy people! To me, these cool stones were just as worthy as gold and gemstones. I brought some home and started making holes in them with a regular drill. It wasn’t a great tool for this, I picked up a few minor flesh wounds and put some holes in the table.

I started encouraging Helen to make jewelry from stones we found. Being a read-the-directions type, she researched how to properly put holes in rocks. So she bought us a rotary drill and the right bits for the job. I had some tanned hides around so we cut cord from them and started stringing things up. Isn’t that what people have always done? Find beautiful things, string them up on animal skin, and wear them? We continued to find beautiful stones from new places we’d visit, like Central California beaches, the desert and dry riverbeds of Arizona, Tennessee rivers, New Mexico, just anywhere we’d go. We started designing and lining things up, drilling and making. We showed some folks and they really liked it.

Beth Kuttner, creator of the Homespun craft shows in Santa Barbara gave us our first chance to be in a market. She curates beautiful markets as a platform for artisans to show their wears and to gather community. The first market was at Dos Pueblos Orchid Farm in a giant glass greenhouse above Santa Barbara. We were nervous to put our stuff out for folks to see for the first time. We brought cool stones, skulls, and other bones to lay our stuff out with. Lo and behold we sold a bunch of stuff and it was a blast!

Beth also introduced us to Shelley Koury. Shelley was a seasoned buyer for 27 years at Upstairs at Pierre Lafond in Montecito. She came to that first Homespun market and loved our work! She invited us to meet with her, and Upstairs became the first retail store to carry our work. We were blown away and feel so fortunate our first retail encounter was with someone like Shelley… straightforward, experienced, having a great eye for art, and above all, very kind.

Over the past decade, we’ve come to find our work is appreciated by people of all walks of life… young, old, rich, poor, fashionista or not. It’s an honor. Primal Elegance is what I call it.

Looking back, we didn’t need to speed up our learning process. You can’t rush stuff, it just has to happen. A lot of joy and dignity come from the learning process, and even making mistakes. We could both use a little more discipline and drive in making, marketing and selling our stuff, promoting it. And taking ourselves more seriously as working artists. Business and the world of commerce is strange so it’s an odd fit as a way of life for us. Of course, there will always be a necessity to trade and barter; but once everything becomes a commodity, life becomes cheap and depravities become common. We see a lot of that in this world, all for pieces of paper that a small group of people own and run. Selling stuff feels strange sometimes, we both feel inclined to just give things away, but of course you can’t do that. And the flip side is knowing our pieces are valuable… they’re real, every piece made from the ground up, every stone collected and drilled, every cord cut from a deerskin we got and tanned. It’s one hundred percent handmade, organic, local, natural, and real. That has a lot of worth.

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.

We stumbled into what we do; but really, it all stems from our love of life, natural beauty and all that entails–the dark and the light. We love the way our pieces resemble artifacts and the way they lead into conversations about human beings and history and culture and living. What we do is what people always did. It’s funny because people will say, ‘wow, I’ve never seen anything like this stuff!’ I always reply, ‘well, then, you missed about 99.9% of human history!’

With that said, people seem to be intrinsically drawn to our creations because it hits somewhere deep in our collective consciousness. It’s in our genes. Human beings seem most happy when they get to go out and find stuff, collect it, bring it home, process it and create things from it. It’s what we’ve always done. We use our hands to do it. Seems like many people today miss working with their hands and it’s something we all need as part of our lives to really be happy. Luckily there’s lots of ways to do that and it can be very simple. It really helps our minds emotionally and physically, it keeps them sharp and wily. It brings dignity and self worth, to create things from your soul and then to share or trade those creations. To give a person dignity is above all things. It is severely lacking in this basically modern feudalistic society we live in.

We provide wearable art in the form of jewelry and other creations, like wall hangings, deerskin bags, fetishes, wands, all kinds of stuff. Every piece is all natural, all hand made, hand collected. I also make friction fire kits, hand drills and bow drills from natural materials I collect. It’s a great human skill to know. I’ve sold over 250 of them over the years on Etsy and have taught people how to make and use them in person too.

I think what sets us apart from others is that we haven’t found anyone else doing what we do. Ours is totally unique and we are told that all the time. I tell folks that all we buy are drill bits. Everything else we found, sometimes we were gifted something, but it all comes from the flow of life. Everyone from little kids to ninety year olds is drawn in to look, feel, touch, and try on our stuff. They feel it cuz it is human. We are all the same! No matter what color, what religion you are, how much money you got, beneath it all we are all the same. It’d be good to get everyone on that page.

We call our “company” tHe nAtuRaL fReE hUmaN bEinGs. We aren’t claiming to be that one hundred percent, but we’re working on it. So much of current society seems inhuman. Are we a farmed species? With some of the stuff going on, it makes you wonder. Our name is a goal. We’d like to see everyone natural and free. Even amidst the dark and light; the ebb and flow are always working to harmonize and balance. Sometimes it all comes together and there is peace for a little bit, but the turbulence will alway return, it’s the nature of things in this duality zone. Like the animals, we can live fearlessly in it and learn to work with it. But there will always be predator and prey here and it seems important to remain wily, fierce and alert while also maintaining an open heart and avoiding trouble. The art of life perhaps. It is an honor to be down here for this brief mission and to have our work be part of that mission.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

Soren: My second child, our one of a kind Josie Mae, was born prematurely December 23, 2002 in St. Louis, Missouri. I arrived the night before, I drove 12 hours from the Rockfish Valley in Virginia, and arrived on the 23 at about 2 am. I went to a payphone to call where my then wife and our son were staying. A woman answered, the mother of my ex-wife’s friend. She sounded strange. She told me she was so sorry but my wife was at the hospital, something was going on with the baby. She told me where the hospital was and I went.

Later that morning we went in to see a doctor. He had the baby’s heart beat on a speaker. He was showing us an ultrasound of our baby, he couldn’t tell if it was a girl or a boy. He was saying it had no lungs and a bunch of other stuff that didn’t make sense to me. I kept telling him that it sure had a strong heart beat. He told me that at one o’clock they were going to get the baby out. He said it wasn’t going to make it. I wanted to be there and he said I could be. He said they’d take the baby out of her belly and then hand it to me to die in my arms. I just kept saying, that sure is a strong heart beat.

As I was washing up for surgery the two doctors who were going to perform this task were washing up too. They were talking about golf and girls and stuff like that. It was surreal. Just another day at the office making big bank! I come from a long line of doctors. Anyway they sure didn’t sound worried so that was good.

My ex-wife’s belly was now completely open. They had some big device to open her ribs more so there was space. It was gnarly looking into that. I seen the one guy start moving something around with both his hands in her stomach. He pried and pulled until finally it came loose! They pulled out a tiny little being who looked right at me with her icy blue eyes and let out a whopping howl!!! I’ve got the goosebumps as I write. She stared into my soul. I started hyperventilating. I was laughing, crying, coughing, I was out of my mind, I’ve never felt that way. I didn’t mean to be rude but I told the doctor who said she was going to die, “Hahahahahaha, she’s got lungs, man!! You were wrong!! That heart beat was too strong!!!” Like I said I was out of my mind. It was crazy thrilling. He was cool about it and said he was glad he was wrong. I hugged him. I don’t know what he thought about that.

Josie weighed one pound, fourteen ounces. She would stay in the NICU for nearly three months. There’s waaaay more to the story, it’s actually fascinating. The medical world writes her off again later that year but, once again, they were wrong. We chose a different route that didn’t follow “convention” and, thanks be to all the Gods, it worked.

This was one of the most major pivots in my life. Josie’s entrance to this realm was the beginning of me truly becoming a man. It helped me leave a venture with two other guys that I was miserable in. It freed me from regular work and led me to learn all the things I since have that have become a large part of what we do. It was one of the most intense periods of my life but it brought things into a real focus and made me face so many fears. I fear nothing now, not in a macho way, but in a spiritual way. Things make sense to me and this was the beginning of me being able to make sense out of all we call life. It’s bichen. Thank you Josie!

Helen: Most of my life, I felt a pressure to know what I wanted to be, to figure out the profession that would define me as a person. I found success in many endeavors–doing well in school, being a collegiate athlete, and being offered advancement in most jobs I took on. But I never felt I found my place or an answer to the elusive what-do-I-want-to-be-when-I-grow-up question.

In my late 30s, I took a drawing class at Santa Monica College because I had always assumed I couldn’t draw. I found out I could, though it took a great deal of effort. It was one of the harder things I’ve ever done, sometimes spending forty hours or more on a drawing. My teacher, Jeffery O’Connell, was tough, demanding, and not one to mince words; there were no easy A’s. I felt deeply honored when he repeatedly suggested I pursue art, even when I nearly quit my second drawing class with him because it was so hard. When he told me he wanted to nominate me for the school’s art mentor program, I laughed at the suggestion and said no way. I told him I couldn’t imagine going back to school at 37. Fortunately he kept pushing me, and I finally agreed. I entered the program and went back to school full-time, studying and making art. I loved every second of it and the new community I was surrounded by. I am forever grateful to Jeff for not giving up on me.

After finishing at SMC, I applied to master’s programs and was rejected by every school. But I did get invited to a summer sculpture program in Virginia. My mentor from the program urged me to go and thought I could reapply to master’s programs the following year. I went at his urging, but more personally, I just wanted to get out of Los Angeles for a while. I had wanted to leave LA for 15 of the 20 years I lived there but just didn’t know where to go.

The program was good in that I pushed myself very hard making new work. But the discourse with my fellow attendees was lackluster, and the professors were brutal in their critiques. It was stifling, uninspiring, and an overly academic approach far too steeped in the context of art history… it felt institutionalized. My studio was a subterranean cubicle with a metal accordion gate for a door. I came to call it art jail.

After being released from art jail. I treated myself to a weekend getaway, where I met Soren. We chatted for three hours the night we met. I felt I had been sent a mirror—someone to remind me who I truly am and what matters most to me, especially nature. Reconnecting to myself, I realized it was okay for me, and time for me, to live an artful life outside of academia; and that an artist doesn’t need to be within any institutionalized system, nor ordained by it, so to speak. This was newfound freedom for me, not to mention I saved a lot of money not pursuing a master’s degree.

When I returned to my apartment in Venice Beach four nights later, I could hardly stand being there. At four in the morning, after crying for two hours and pacing, I flipped a coin: heads, move to Virginia.

And now I do know what I want to be… the best possible version of myself.

What can society do to ensure an environment that’s helpful to artists and creatives?

Helen: It starts with each person. When a person creates using their hands and heart they can more easily appreciate others who create, and creation in general. It’s a reciprocal system of relationships to each other and to our surrounding world. Life is about relationships. When people see and feel that connection it brings more love and appreciation to the whole.

Soren: Society seems unhinged and unhelpful. As I said earlier I don’t know if we are in a human created society or a society created for us by something that “farms” us. I’ve studied human societies all of my life. Societies by and for human beings provide the basics of what human beings need to survive and thrive. Everything revolves around family and the support of all beings within that society in it’s relation to their environment. The myths and cultural ways support and reinforce the society so that it can persist into the future endlessly. It’s the same with the animals. When done right the society can continue for eons. Intrinsically the society creates artistic, creative people, it’s in the nature of things through what is required to keep stuff running smoothly. Of course I am talking about “primitive” societies. True human societies have childcare built in, you don’t leave your baby with strangers. True human societies don’t toss their elders into for profit “retirement” homes to spend their final days in isolation and loneliness. In a true human society if one is hungry all are so. In a true human society a home is a birth right and doesn’t require you to do strange jobs you don’t like for thirty years to pay it off. In true human societies boys and girls become men and women through strong rituals and once done they are never treated like a child again. In true human societies we tell our own stories and are not misled by forked tongues trying to sell you things from a box in the living room. In true human societies we seek the advice of the elders and hold them in high regard as they are well versed in how this realm works. The story goes on.

I’m not trying to romanticize the past. This realm of dark and light, duality, separation, will always be difficult as it seeks to harmonize constantly. Many societies from the past understood this cosmic battle and found ways to understand its laws and have that as the foundation. For some reason we were taken off that path and that is fine. We continue to learn. Our current society seems, as I stated before, to not fulfill almost any of the needs of human beings. I don’t blame others for we have allowed this, though under duress. We also have the power to change it so that our needs are better met. As long as we keep quibbling about our differences, our colors, our amounts of money, our ways, our styles, our genders, and whatever else, we won’t get there. Divide and conquer wasn’t just a made up term, it’s a way to undermine humanity and there are those in a predator prey realm that have no qualms in how far they’ll go to do that. My solution is to make friends with everyone and treat everyone with respect. If that respect is not returned then I can walk away, but my door will always be open to all who come in sincerity and warmth. The more people that do this the more we will change the backdrop from terror to goodness. Creativity is a byproduct of security and love and acceptance of who you really are. True security lies in community and family ties, it’s the ultimate insurance. It, in my opinion, should be a birth right as well. It’s up to us to create this environment. As for now, with who I see “controlling” society and the narratives, I’m not holding my breath! Everywhere I go though I try to spread the goodness and encourage the soulful creativity! And everywhere I go I find wonderful, kind, generous, soulful people. We shall see. We’re only here for a little while. It’s a wild ride!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://thenaturalfreehumanbeings.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thenaturalfreehumanbeings/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@thenaturalfreehumanbeings
• Other: Our phone number is 310-384-4611. Give us a call! We can talk about anything!

Image Credits

All photos are by Helen and Soren Mitchell.