Today we’d like to introduce you to Anne Javaherian.
Hi Anne, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstories.
When I was an undergraduate (many years ago now!), I was interested in taking metal art and jewelry courses, but the English Literature program I was pursuing my degree in didn’t always play nice with the Fine Arts programs. For years, courses never seemed to line up to make interacting with both disciplines work. Then, during my last year of school, my husband and I had our first child and my priority became finishing my degree and focusing on my family. I spent the next 15 years raising our five beautiful children. But the idea that I might enjoy making jewelry kept rattling around in my brain. When our youngest started kindergarten in 2018, I finally took a metalsmithing course at our local community college. The intent at the time was to explore the medium and have fun. Still, when I started spending more and more time at the school’s studio, I spent any extra time learning various smithing techniques in books and online, took more classes, started accruing an impressive array of tools to use in my home studio, and even started dreaming about jewelry designs, it became clear that my little “hobby” was becoming more of a passion. After friends started commissioning pieces from me and encouraging me to sell my work, that passion turned into a business!
I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey has been a smooth road?
I would say that the biggest challenge I have in my work is navigating my feelings about the complexity of how to manage and maintain a good work/life balance. It’s a classic struggle that many working mothers have. I am so excited that Cold Rain and Snow Jewelry is growing, and I am thankful for the little community built around it. Every show I attend now has people who traveled there specifically to see me and my work. It is rewarding and humbling. At the same time, I sometimes find myself intentionally reigning the business in and scaling it back. I am still working on how to let the business grow and meet the time and energy demands that being a working Metalsmith necessitates while still being the active and engaged Mama I’ve always been. We live outside Duluth on some acreage, and one of our outbuildings in the woods houses my studio. So, instead of being a stay-at-home Mom as I was for many years, now I’m a work-from-home Mom. My children are a bit older now and while their needs have changed, they have not gone away. Luckily, they are happy to step into the studio if they need me or want to chat, and I’m pretty good about setting down the tools on a gorgeous Duluth day to hit the beach or head out for a bike ride. Plus, they’re generally pretty cool with their Mom rolling up to pick them up from school/music instruction/practice/whatever rocking her overalls, smelling vaguely metallic, and looking dirty as I likely rushed out of the studio to grab them just in the nick of time!
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
I like to make clean-lined statement jewelry with natural materials. Each item I make is hand fabricated from scratch and, through traditional metalsmithing skills, metal sheet, wire, and stone are turned into beautiful jewelry and wearable art. I aim to create pieces that straddle the fine line between earthy and elegant. I live in the Northwoods of Minnesota and love to take advantage of the natural playground I get to live in. That means hiking, cycling, paddling, and Nordic and downhill skiing are part of everyday life. The jewelry I make is meant to be worn when you are in the elements living your best outdoor life or when you’re getting gussied up for a lovely evening in town.
We’d love to hear what you think about risk-taking.
I believe fortune favors the bold (audaces fortuna juvat!) and have benefitted greatly in my personal life when I’ve pushed myself to take risks. Of course, you can always mitigate risk, but gain little by playing it too safe. For example, I took my five children on a ten-day backpacking trip on the Superior Hiking Trail several years ago. My youngest son was 5 at the time, and my eldest 15. My husband had to work so I took them into the backcountry alone. I am an experienced backpacker, but I was still a bit nervous about the enormity of navigating five children through the wilderness alone. So, I took a weekend-long Wilderness First Aid course ahead of time to brush up on some skills before heading off into the woods all by myself with the kids. Was there still a risk? Yes. Anything can happen in the backcountry. But I trust myself to handle most situations well enough, and where I felt I needed a little help, I mitigated the risk with some additional education. And there was a great reward, of course. It was a tremendous joy to have that experience with my children at the stages of life they were in, and we all look back on that trip as a formative adventure. And we do love an adventure. One of my main goals as a Mama is to raise children with adventurous spirits. Which sometimes means taking risks!
That attitude pertains to my jewelry business because, as an artist, you are always putting yourself out there for others to judge you and your work. It can be quite scary. Each art show is a new opportunity for success or failure. But, I love setting up my booth for a weekend art show because I get so much out of interacting with customers and getting excited about stones, jewelry, and the art of metalsmithing with people. That reward certainly outweighs the discomfort of taking the risk. Another way that a bit of a risk taker touches my jewelry business is occasionally I have to shutter my shop for a few weeks as I need to head off to the Utah desert for an unsupported bike-packing trip along the White Rim or head off to the mountains to be a ski bum with my college kid for a few weeks because I have to meet the demands of having an adventurous and wanderlusty spirit. I always apologize to my customers in advance for my prolonged absences!
Contact Info:
- Website: Etsy.com/shop/coldrainandsnowshop
- Instagram: _coldrainandsnowjewelry_
- Facebook: @coldrainandsnowjewelry
