About my business name: I wanted to create a word for my business that somehow expressed what I hope for in my creative process - things like productivity and imagination, usefulness and beauty and sweetness. I kept thinking about bees and how they represent things like community cooperation, and work that produces something sweet. I have Italian heritage as well, my Italian ancestors having been tailors and shoemakers (I also have Scottish ancestors who were tailors!), and I wanted to evoke the inspiration they give me. All too often we dismiss art and beauty as being extras rather than necessities, but without art and beauty, I think we are missing some essential pieces of the human experience. I thought the Italian word for bee, ape (pronounced like "ah-pay"), was also so lovely, and bees produce incredible beauty for our world, directly through their honey and honeycombs, and indirectly through their pollination of our important food crops and beautiful flowers. This is similar to how I view art - it directly contributes to beauty in the world in the form of all sort of tangible art, but it also indirectly contributes by inspiring the human soul and communicating feelings and ideas.

And, for my daughter’s first bachelor’s degree she majored in Linguistics, minored in Italian, and for a time liked to make constructed languages ("con lang”) that were generated with a free program someone wrote (she is currently working on her second bachelor’s degree, in Computer Science). My daughter gave me a bunch of words from one of her constructed languages to play with for my business name. I ended up really liking her con-lang word for "imagine", which is vivriah (viv-ree-ah). Combined, the two words, ape and vivriah became Apevivriah. A studio, of course, is an artist's work room, so I included that in my business name, since the art and artistry is the foundation of what I have to offer.

About my logo: The LeafPearls design is the very first image I made when beginning to experiment with surface design and pattern repeats, and I still love it. I drew it with colored pencils on paper, and one of these days I might turn it into a proper logo - maybe with a bee or two added!

About Me: I am a United States American, Generation X woman, wife, and mother. My children are now each in their 20s, both of them have ADHD (my husband also has ADHD), and Auditory Processing Disorder (I also have Auditory Processing Disorder), and one of them also is Autistic (this also runs in the family). Both of my children are very bright. All of this has hugely influenced their school experience, and thus also my experience as a mother, and especially as a human being. I live in beautiful Longmont, Colorado (Cheyenne, Arapaho, Ute), which is in Boulder County and just East of the Rocky Mountains. Our closest National Park is Rocky Mountain National Park, less than an hour’s drive away. Long’s Peak and Mount Meeker are the twin mountain peaks that we can see from our lovely little city.

I've been an artist since my early years, and studied art or design (beginning Theater design - costumes and sets, and then Interior Design including drafting blueprints by hand) through high school and college. I never did finish those degrees because at the time I kept running out of money, and I was afraid of taking on huge student loan debts, since back in the 1990s the general understanding was that art wasn’t a viable career option, and design careers required years of unpaid or low-paying internships, complete with regular long-slog hours into the nights. I tried my hand at culinary school which was miserable, though I came away well-equipped to make anything I or my family wanted to eat! I wasn’t in a position to work without pay or for a wage that didn’t support living expenses, so I ended up just leaving school altogether just before my husband and I got married, and then working until I became pregnant with my first child. I completed a rigorous program for energy healing, which ended up really being the healing and therapy I needed for myself. (I did finally complete a bachelor’s degree through a combination of transferred credits, the professional healing program, and correspondence classes.)

I've kept my hand in creative pursuits one way or another, through various visual arts, fiber arts, cooking and baking, gardening, and I would even say creative approaches to rearing my neurodivergent children through different types of schools in the American school system. Life is a never-ending opportunity for continued learning and growth, and I have always dealt with life's ups, downs, curveballs, and delights with an eye towards how I can keep growing and maturing as a person. If you've read this far, you are probably already a friend or family member (ha!).

You might notice that I have a sewing blog, periodically updated. I still sew! I no longer make a blog post about each project. I have been continuously sewing assorted projects, everything from more bags, to little home projects, and garments, since I began when my children were little. My initial love of surface design came from my love of sewing and choosing fabrics for these projects, though I’ve come to appreciate the surface design all around us, everywhere. (Maybe I’ll teach sewing someday, as I’ve learned so much over the last 20 years! Or maybe I’ll design some bag patterns, who knows? I’ve certainly got some ideas for some, at any rate.)

While I absolutely love surface design on fabric and clothing, I also love surface design on and in books and also on and in packaging - what a pleasure to open a box of something and find lovely art printed inside! I love illustrations in all settings and I love wall art, and I began to more consciously appreciate the huge importance of book art when my children were little - we read books together all the time, and the art included with stories or nursery rhymes was an important part of the experience. Watching my children’s little faces study the images on the pages as I read the words out loud was one of the special delights of caring for small children. And for myself, I will read a book no matter the quality (from paperback to just-released hardback), but I have come to particularly love the look and hand-held visual experience of reprinted hardback editions of book classics done with exquisite art, or the new book releases displayed enticingly in the library - yes, I will choose a book by its cover, sometimes! Perhaps to be enjoyed with a cup of tea from a beautifully adorned tea tin, or with coffee in a mug made or decorated by an artist. Art is everywhere, and I want to be part of adding a little bit of delight to the world.

- Juliana artist, sewist, and owner and founder of Apevivriah Studio