As a true lover of beautiful things, I was looking forward to CN’s visit to Manhattan this week as we were here to film for a segment on New York as an extremely crafty city.

Ahhhh, New York, what words can really describe it. The pizza is perfect, the shopping is outrageous, and the cabbies all drive like Mario Andretti. It is definitely not for the faint of heart or feet.

Since I am pretty zany, New York seemed like the perfect place to seek out a few hip indie crafters who are not slave to the mass production machine of consumerism that we all know and love. Enter Michal Golan.

Michal (pronounced “Mi-call”) is a refreshing Israeli born artisan who began making jewelry while attending the University of Maryland so she could pay rent. She sold her wares at Eastern Market, and other craft shows and farmers markets in the DC metropolitan area. She met her husband Michael at the Israeli Embassy in the District. He saw real potential for Michal’s work and viola! A business was born.

After moving to New York City to study art at the graduate level, Michal and her husband fell in deep love with Manhattan. The galleries, the inspiration, the FOOD; the city had everything they were looking for. Michal continued to paint and design her mosaics and beautiful artisan jewelry. Over the last 25 years in the city, they have opened two stores and purchased a small building which functions as her studio, production facility and their home. Everything Michal designs for the over 2000 wholesale clients worldwide is handmade right here in Manhattan. Talk about supporting the local economy! It was also so nice to discover that they had employees who have worked for her for 20 years, and that they consider them to be like family. (We counted at least 10 while visiting.) Living well in NYC with no commute to work and doing what they love…such is bliss!! Everything about both Michal and Michael was friendly, warm and easy on the nerves, including their dog, a boxer named Rudolph.

www.michalgolan.com

 

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Here at craftynation.com, our goal is to empower & inspire our community to create beautiful things. But what does it mean to be empowering? I think at a minimum, it means to help someone recognize their own ability to be creative, and then assist their confidence to use that ability. Why be empowering? To be a part of beautifying the world in which we live, move, and have our being.

Too deep for you today? Well, think about this…What does it really mean to try and inspire others to make the world a better place to live? Well, I do think that making beautiful things contributes to this effort, even if it’s not on par with feeding the homeless or clothing poor children in the slums of some forgotten neighborhood. Those acts are indeed beautiful, tis true…but are these the only ways we should be trying to bring about a better world to live in?

What about this question. Do beautiful things improve our culture? Do they improve people’s lives? If so, to what extent? Hmmm, I can only answer that when I drive through Shenandoah Valley in Spring, or watch the sunset on the ocean in my home town in So. Cal., I just revel in the beauty of the Creator’s work, and then I want to be like that. I want to bring about beauty in the world.

I think that being crafty does just that. It not only makes our surroundings nice to look at, but at times can even improve the lives of those around us. When one of my girlfriend’s kids were young, I helped her decoupage the walls of their rooms with pictures we had blown up at the local copy shop of her and hubby, along with activities of the family doing things that the kids loved. Her daughter is now 11, and she clearly remembers looking at the walls at night when going to sleep with the nightlight on…”My Mom was always there with me, smiling at me…” She recalls. “It made me feel good to shut my eyes at night and wake up to them in the morning.”

Finally, inspiring others to create beautiful things is giving to the world in a way that we all benefit from, in the short term and the long. From beautiful landscapes and artifacts in public spaces, to helping your friends design and beautify their living space, empowering and inspiring others to be creative allows them to place themselves in the position of being inspirational to their own spheres of influence. And that in itself is empowering.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I must go empower hubby to help with creating dinner!

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