We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Teri Quinn. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Teri below.
Teri , thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Do you think your parents have had a meaningful impact on you and your journey?
The year Jurassic Park came out is the year I became a musician and amateur paleontologist. I was in kindergarten in 1994. The first thing my parents did right was not shelter us from what was on TV. For Christmas that year, my parents bought me a playskool keyboard and The Land Before Time on VHS. They also happened to buy themselves Jurassic Park. It was the year of dinosaurs. That Christmas night, my parents casually put Jurassic Park on the TV and I sat watching in awe while also plunking on my keyboard. I heard the theme and immediately plunked it out by ear. My mom was in awe and immediately fostered my newfound gift in music.
The second thing my parents did right was never stopping me from being creative or trying to talk me out of becoming an artist. They did everything they could to scrounge up money to put me in music lessons. When I said I wanted to go to college for music, my parents said, ‘We can’t imagine anything else.’ They’ve really supported me through my artistic journey.
How amateur paleontology comes into play-I also grew up loving dinosaurs because of those two VHS tapes my parents bought in 1994. My love of natural history has weaved its way into my jewelry artwork. I have merged my passion for our prehistoric earth with the joy of jewelry making. Paleontology and natural history have also weaved its way into my music. I enjoy using natural science terms and definitions as metaphors for human experience & emotions. I often joke when I am going through an artistic rough patch that I’m going to quit everything and go back to school for paleontology and disappear into the depths of Montana and dig up dinosaur bones.
So the two out of many things my parents did right was foster my creative & musical growth as well as buy me two dinosaur VHS tapes.
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 am a multidisciplinary artist primarily making music and creating jewelry.
As a musician, I have been exploring sounds since I was a kid. I ate, slept, and breathed music. I loved listening to it. I loved making it. And I loved studying it and pushing myself to be better. In highschool, I was the weirdo kid in the Grand Rapids Youth Symphony on clarinet that immediately bolted out of rehearsals to drive down the street to an all ages punk show. I went from Tchaikovsky to Dead Kennedys in one night. I loved both equally. I got my first guitar in highschool and began writing songs and playing open mics. I put down songwriting in college to devote myself to the academic study of clarinet performance and music composition. However, when I graduated in 2013, I was burnt out with academia and life in general. I was working a crappy job, in a crappy relationship, just finished college, and had no goals in life. That was until I heard Willie Watson wail Mexican Cowboy on the the Banjo on A Prairie Home Companion. If you haven’t heard it, omg look it up. Specifically his A Prairie Home Companion performance. I had saved a little bit of money from my crappy serving job and immediately went out and bought a Deering Goodtime Banjo.
Banjo has largely been my primary songwriting instrument. I started off exploring the traditional Appalachian clawhammer but quickly began to see how far I could take the banjo beyond the traditional folk realm. My approach to songwriting still stems from my exploration of sounds. I enjoy exploring layers and textures of sounds beyond just simply writing a song. As a songwriter, sounds, rhythms, and patterns come first. Then the words come. Lately I have been writing more tunes on guitar and writing songs that are far outside of my usual indie folk tendencies. As a musician, and artist in general, I have no desire to be pigeonholed and enjoy creating whatever I feel at the time. It may make me confusing on the social and Spotify algorithms, but that is the least of my concerns.
Along with making music, I am also a jeweler. I began making jewelry in highschool as a creative way to pay for my first car. My parents told me I couldn’t get my license until I bought my first car myself. To speed up the process, I made hemp shell chokers and beaded necklaces. I walked around school selling them to my classmates for $5 a pop. I completely put down jewelry making until a few years after I graduated college. I was already a collector of bones and cool rocks that I found on hikes. One day it occurred to me that I could make jewelry with the bones and cool rocks. In 2016, I started Rattlebone Design and sold my bone jewelry creations on the sidewalks at First Fridays in the Crossroads. At the time, my process was drilling holes into bones and creating bead and bone patterns with intricately layered chains. I have recently leveled up my work after taking a beginning metalsmith course at Alloy Metalsmithing Community. I am a bench member and have begun creating pieces forged out of mixed metals such as copper, brass, and sterling silver. My jewelry aesthetic is definitely inspired by ancient history. I enjoy making my works look like ancient talismans found after 1000 years. Or as another friend put it, ‘Your jewelry looks like jewelry for fancy cave people.’ I love the look of heavily textured copper and brass together with pronged &/or bezeled fossils, bones, crystals, and mirrors. I also love adding crystal beads to chains for a ‘rosary’ look. I approach my jewelry work similarly to my music. I enjoy textures, layers, and seeing how far I can push a creation beyond its boundary.
What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?
As an artist, I had to unlearn that working a day job outside of your artistic field makes you a failure. In my twenties, I lived off of student loans and then moved to crappy serving jobs. Multiple times I quit my crappy jobs to work as an artist full time, however I did not have the money or the discipline to make it work. I sank quick and went back to part time serving work that barely made me enough to survive. I couldn’t invest in my artwork. I couldn’t buy supplies, I couldn’t book studio time, and my brain space was taken up by the fear of not having enough for rent. I now have a day job that I am passionate about that is a full time salary outside of my artistic field and it allows me to pay for supplies, book studio time, and further my artwork. I can create for creations sake and not worry if the art fails because at the end of the month, rent is paid. My goal is to eventually be a full time musician and jeweler now that I have learned valuable financial lessons that I did not understand in my younger artistic years.
What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?
The most rewarding aspect of being an artist is sharing my art with others. Seeing others’ reactions, hearing their words, listening to stories about how my artwork and music makes them feel lets me know I am on the right track. I love art and creativity as a means for community and connection.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://teriquinnmusic.com
- Instagram: @teriquinn @rattlebonedesign
- Facebook: facebook.com/teriquinnmusic facebook.com/rattlebonedesign
- Youtube: @teriquinnmusic
- Other: https://teriquinnmusic.bandcamp.com
Image Credits
Quinn Kavanaugh
Hai Chen
Taylor Carter
Ben McBee