We were lucky to catch up with Vanessa Walilko recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Vanessa, thanks for joining us today. Did you always know you wanted to pursue a creative or artistic career? When did you first know?

Some of my earliest memories involve creative projects. First I would build a LEGO set, then I would take it apart and create my own design. I started making crafts with pipe cleaners and pom poms at age 4, then started sewing tiny toys out of felt at age 6. When I was 8, I took a beaded jewelry class during my school’s summer program, and I completely fell in love with it. I was hungry to learn all the projects the instructor had for us, and I started designing my own beaded pieces. My mother bought me all the craft supplies I wanted to fuel my creativity. By age 11, I was reverse engineering beaded necklaces just by looking at them and then started designing sculptural work.

I loved doing beadwork. Making jewelry was the thing I loved doing the most. But I never thought I could do it as a career. I was raised by Polish immigrants who wanted me to go to college and get a “good job”. They had worked in factories their whole lives and thought working in an office was success. So I applied to and got into college, went to orientation, signed up for classes. The night before my first day of classes, I was working on a beaded bracer, and it suddenly hit me that making jewelry was the only thing I actually wanted to do with my life. It washed over me–I knew this is what I needed to be doing, but I was stuck.

Unfortunately, I pushed through four years of college and got a degree in sociology, which I periodically use. I wish I had listened to myself, dropped out, or tried to transfer to a different school, but at the time I didn’t know what to do but just keep going forward.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I’ve been making jewelry since I was 8 years old. I started out weaving lots of little seed beads together, and I fell in love with the process. Maybe it was because of all the LEGO sets I had as a kid, but I’ve always loved taking small things and putting them together to make something intricate.

This work evolved over the years. I bought a beaded necklace in New Mexico when I was 11 just so I could take it home and reverse engineer how to make it. When I did, I started making lots of little dolls and sculptures out of beads. Over the years, this evolved into making more elaborate pieces, which evolved into “Beadmail” a series of armor pieces.

In my early 20s, I took a chainmail class at a local art center and fell in love with the process. I started making chainmail fashion pieces almost immediately, designing a chainmail shrug with 15,000 aluminum rings.

No matter what medium I work in, I always try to do something that no one has ever seen before. With chainmail, I wanted to create fashion pieces. I’ve made jackets out of anodized aluminum rings, and vests out of thousands of little aluminum scales. I even made a chainmail octopus hood, which has gone viral multiple times.

My chainmail work has been in music videos, in movies, and on Broadway. I also make the scales on Cody Rhodes’ entrance gear. Every new project is an opportunity to advance the medium.

Have you ever had to pivot?

I really wanted to make beaded jewelry for a living. I love the process of weaving beads or embroidering beads to cloth. But when I started working as a production assistant for two jewelry designers, I saw the reality of what it meant to do art fairs to make a living. If you hope to sell a certain amount of product at a show, you have to produce four times the amount product for the show. This ensures that your art fair booth looks full and enticing to customers at all times.

With beadwork, each piece I made took hours. The idea of pouring all that time and energy into pieces that I was only hoping to sell was really sobering. I hate waste in general–wasting time, wasting materials, so I wasn’t sure what to do.

When I found chainmail, I loved it. And while the materials cost was significantly higher, production time was lower. I could make more product to sell. Chainmail also allowed me to customize pieces on the fly–often at art fairs directly in front of customers–which was another way of engaging with people. So I made the pivot to only doing chainmail jewelry for a living.

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

No matter what I do, I’m driven by a desire to be the best. I want to make work no one has seen before. I want to push the boundaries of what’s expected in the medium.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://kalibutterfly.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kali_butterfly
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KaliButterfly