Making a Statement: Dawn Grady, Junebug Designs

Dawn Grady does everything with intention. The jewelry maker and business owner sat down with Cincy Makers Collaborative this past summer to discuss her journey as a creative in Cincinnati, and she shared her transition from Marketing Director to Entrepreneur/Jewelry Designer, as well as her future goals to upscale her business.

The Junebug Designs business owner opened up her shop in the Over-the-Rhine neighborhood of Cincinnati in October of 2020—not a particularly easy time to be starting a new brick-and-mortar endeavor. 

She had been working for Cincinnati Public Schools for fifteen years, and was 48 years old when she said she first started thinking seriously about such a serious career pivot. 

“During the Covid crisis I thought, ‘you know, maybe now’s the time,’” Grady says. 

So she went on LinkedIn, did an easy apply for another similar Communications position with another school district, and explains that—despite being 45 minutes late to the meeting—she nevertheless interviewed for the position for an hour and a half. The next day, Grady says, “they called and offered me the job.” 

So she turned it down, quit her job with CPS, opened the shop a few days later, and is still open for business some four years later. 

“It’s tough to do that at my age,” Grady explains. “The older you get, the more risk averse you are.” 

But she has also been learning to trust her instinct and, “listening, when God is talking to me.” So she is getting better at moving forward on faith—even when things can seem unclear.

Dawn explains that she’s a words person, not a numbers person, and that kind of self-awareness is often lost on creative makers. 

“You know you can’t really be numbers averse in business though,” the designer shares. That’s probably one of the biggest hurdles that I’m learning.” 

“I can’t say I’ve learned it yet because I haven’t passed over that hurdle, but it’s definitely a piece of advice that I would say to anybody coming behind me.”

So, to be in a business that takes her out of her comfort zone, Ms. Grady certainly must love what she’s doing. And it certainly isn’t a new area of interest for this long time fan of statement jewelry. 

Ms. Grady explains that she has always associated the fashion with powerful women like her mother, aunt, and grandmother. 

“They were all boss women in their own rights, and they wore their statement pieces,” Grady explains.

“As a child, I always wanted to grow up into the woman who could own that kind of unique sense of style.”

Fast forward to a professional dinner Ms. Grady attended during her twenties. She describes how she wanted to dress up and, “act like I belong there, because this [was] all new to me.” 

So she spent “more money than necessary” on a gown and selected something from the jewelry department that, “looked as Dynasty as I can afford.”

But once home and dressed, the necklace began to fall apart. 

“I went to the dinner,” she tells. “But I didn’t quite feel like I was owning it.” 

And that, for the emerging young professional, was one of the early proof points she needed regarding the power of statement jewelry.

In 2012 Grady returned to her hometown of Cincinnati and took a class on bead stringing at the University of Cincinnati’s Communiversity. For a class assignment, she created a necklace and earring set that her fellow classmates raved over, and the impression was not lost on the future designer. She ran to the nearest bead shops in town and got really lost in the making. 

At the time, the business owner was—like so many others—binging on Game of Thrones.  Being inspired by their various characters, Ms. Grady began channeling the concept of a “Warrior Queen” who can marry together the idea of being both regal and a brave fighter. 

 

Motivated and lead by her vision, Dawn started investing in learning new skills and how to work with high quality materials. Seeing the execution of her design from start to finish confirmed that she was on the right track.

Ms. Grady took a metal smithing class in Philadelphia that same year. “I just literally fell in love with the act of being able to take a raw material and a stone and to put those together as a piece of art that I just conceived,” the artist explains.

In 2015 Dawn started an online store, and began hosting home trunk shows with friends. But one of the most critical factors of her success is that she found out about Mortar.

Not only did the aforementioned Cincinnati-based entrepreneurial hub have resources for aspiring business persons like Ms. Grady, but they also had a pop-up space that they offered at a discounted rate for those enrolled in their programs. Dawn graduated from Mortar’s Entrepreneurship Academy, and was also their Pitch Night winner of 2017.

“What I really didn’t anticipate was just how tapped in they are within the city in terms of resources coming to the African American entrepreneurs. Like, it’s a no brainer to be married to Mortar,” she says with enthusiasm. Not only did Mortar provide Grady with access to her first storefront space, they also passed along grant opportunities that made sense for both her and the needs of her business. 

This is something that the CMC ultimately would like to help make more accessible for makers and artists of all kinds throughout Cincinnati. 

“I think Cincinnati is a good place, particularly if you are a maker who wants to build it into a business,” Grady says. 

“Cincinnati has a lot of resources and other small business owners, networks, grant programs and opportunities,”

“I think it’s a really good place to get a start,” Dawn says. 

We wholeheartedly agree!

To find out more about Dawn’s statement-making jewelry, visit her website at https://junebugjewelrydesigns.com/ or follow Junebug Jewelry on social media @junebugjewelrydesigns or https://www.facebook.com/JunebugJewelryDesigns/

Cincy Makers Collaborative sat down for a Zoom conversation with Founder/Director of The Collective, Aly Stacy, to discuss her work as an artist and entrepreneur, covering her journey as self-taught clothing maker with a slow fashion brand, to managing a gallery/storefront with over 180 artists. 

“I’m kind of Multiverse,” Aly says when asked about her background that led her down this creative path. In fact, being an artist comes naturally to her.

Stacy explains that she, “grew up in the film business.” With a mother who was an Art Director and Makeup Artist, and father who was a Photographer, both of Stacy’s parents worked freelance for big corporations in town like P&G and Kenner.

“We were on the back of CareBear boxes and stuff like that,” she adds jokingly, “and we were very involved in the art production world.  And as I got older I did set design and working with props, which gave me a good background for setting space,” Stacy says. So being an artist and curating a gallery didn’t seem like a big leap for her.

The slow fashion artist launched her clothing company KreativeMindz in the early 2000’s, in what she calls the “art show circuit” over the past few decades.  She had initially created an accessory line that she tried to sell while wearing the clothing she’d been making for herself. And because she seemed to get more attention for the clothes she was wearing than from the accessories she was attempting to sell, she quickly pivoted to the more fashion-driven making.

“People asked, ‘Where did you get that skirt?’” She says, mentioning her now popular “sunburst skirt”, which Aly explains, “is a similar pattern, but every single one is one-of-a-kind and different.” So, taking a cue from her audience, she leaned into slow fashion, where there already seemed to be an interest for her creations. 

“It is my art and I just ran with it, and it ended up working out for me, and now it has evolved into all these other things,” Stacy says.

Right before 2020, Aly was approached by leaders in her hometown of New Richmond to “bring art to the village,” and she signed a lease two weeks before COVID. 

In June of 2020, she opened her first iteration of The Collective in an old church, drawing in friends and artists she’d identified in the region and set the place up, “like an art show in a store,” in order to “make it more accessible to everyone.” 

She features “a little bit of everything” in her space that features a “highly curated collection” of 180 local and regional artists making everything from “superfine original art to soaps made from farm-raised goats.”

“It’s probably not what people think of as a ‘gallery’” Stacy says. “But it is a hybrid gallery.”

She remained in that location for a few years before looking for a new space and they are currently in Columbia Tusculum with a recent additional location set to open sometime next Spring in the newly-built Findlay Market Garage building.

“I always thought about opening a gallery space but it was more once I was done traveling, once I was older—maybe in my 60’s,” Stacy laughs. “And it just kind of fell into my lap and I already had the vision so I was like, ‘might as well!’”

“I’m already kind of that way,” she continues. “I’m a leaper. If it feel it, I go for it. So we did!” The artist exclaims enthusiastically.

And despite that enthusiasm, the reality she explains is that, “a storefront is a whole different thing from just making art and traveling around to art shows and stuff.” 

“The overhead of all of that plus managing 180 artists is no joke,” she admits. 

“I am super grateful to be able to bring a space like that to Cincinnati and to give the artists a space to be able to sell their work,” Stacy says humbly. And she currently works for free, not paying herself and relying on the few hired staff like her son who lives above the Columbia Tusculum gallery. 

“I am very much aware of the sweat equity and putting that into the company. But the plan if we open up the second space is we’re going to at least have to hire one other person, on Columbia Tusculum maybe two.

When asked what she’s learned over the course of the past few transformative years, Aly admits that what her vision for the future has turned into is, “much bigger than anything I could do myself.”

“Growth is hard,” Stacy says. “I’m a do-it-myself kind of person but as you grow you find out you really can’t do everything by yourself.” 

And with all of the expansion she’s been experiencing, finding a good team will be crucial to her businesses’ success going forward. 

The Collective anticipates more foot traffic when they open the second location in the busy Findlay Market area, and Stacy says that “to me, that organic growth—just word of mouth—is a more stable foundation than paying for advertising.”

“And that’s all we have right now anyways,” the artist admits, laughing.

Born and raised in Cincinnati, when asked about what she likes most about her experience as a Maker in this town, Stacy answers “I’m really proud of this city now.” 

“Cincinnati has come a long way and there is this building of the art scene with more and more artists and people supporting that, and realizing how important that is too.

“I think Cincinnati has come a long way in the last 20 years—even in the last ten years,” Stacy says. 

And CMC hopes that we can foster and support artists like Aly Stacy, who are doing much, not only for herself, but also for her community of fellow makers.

Pi Oudomsouk - Nomad Design

Cincinnati-based sculptor and fabricator Amphay (Pi) Oudomsouk is a soft-spoken creative. He met with this CMC author at his studio in Camp Washington in the 2701SG building off of Spring Grove to share more about his experience as a Maker in Cincinnati, and the journey he has had so far.

While in his studio, Pi showed off his current work-in-progress: a life-sized sculpture of a beloved basketball coach, Bobby Keith, which was commissioned by Clay County High School in Kentucky. 

For this project, the artist scanned another coach as a stand-in for the honoree, and then sculpted over that using digital software ZBrush, which allows him to create detailed 3D models. 

“This is something that I’ve taught myself,” Oudomsouk says of the digital interface. And it is clear that he has spent much of his life with an enthusiasm for learning new skills.

Pi came to Cincinnati with his family in 1980 as a refugee from Laos when he was just ten years old. Because his father was in the Royal Army, and the CIA was funding them to fight the Viet Cong, (whose Ho Chi Minh Trail passed through his home country), Oudomsouk and his family of seven fled their homeland. 

“After the Communists took over Laos, a lot of the military and government officials left,” Pi explains. “Because what they do is, they send people to the ‘education camp’ and that’s where bad things can happen,” he continues.   

So the seven of them, (five kids and two adults), were headed on the plane to New York when they got word mid-flight that the organization who was supposed to take them in could no longer do so. 

Fortunately, a church in the Cincinnati suburbs of Wyoming that had been in the process of trying to adopt a refugee family, offered them last-minute refuge instead, so Pi and his family lived in the basement of the church for six months until they were able to find themselves a home in their new city. 

“It’s kind of funny,” he concedes. “I feel like I’m not rooted, I’m always kind of floating,” he explains. “I mean, even though I feel really home here, I grew up here, but I feel like I’m kind of floating,” he says. 

And that untethered-ness is most likely the titular origin of Oudomsouk’s creative collaboration, Nomad Design Shop. 

“Nomad is actually a collective,” he explains. “There’s like five, six of us now and we kind of help each other,” he says.

The members share overhead costs to make their space affordable, and divvy up the work on various projects, based on the sets of skills they bring to the table. That malleability also allows their creative process to likewise be flexible and not fixed.

“The way we work is, if I get a project, I would manage it from start to finish,” he explains. So if he needs help on a certain area, he would work with the other members to assist accordingly.  

“We moved in right before COVID happened, and so a lot of the creative jobs were just not happening,” he explains. 

What was happening was that, with so many people staying home during the Pandemic, Oudomsouk and team began doing custom “built-in’s” for their clients instead. 

Explaining what a “built-in” is, Pi describes it as, “a structure within the house that makes their experience more livable—almost like an installation”, he explains. So when you look at Nomad Design’s website to see examples of such projects, you will see bespoke bookshelves, drawers, benches, desks, and other custom-made structures built for domestic use.

But making installations within the home was not where Pi got his start as a Maker. In fact, his work history reveals over a decade of experience creating his sculptural objects inside of cultural institutions.

Pi graduated with a BFA from SAIC in Chicago and stayed in the city to work for both The Field Museum and the Brookfield Zoo for another ten years, after graduating.  He was lucky enough to get an internship at the aforementioned iconic Natural History museum while still a student. During his time on staff, Oudomsouk worked with scientists and a biologist to create and install exhibitions that were meticulous in their attention to detail. 

The maker describes a project for their African exhibition, in which he created a tree from scratch, fabricating every leaf and flower, as well as an accurately-depicted giraffe, posed to be eating from the tree. 

“I think I was the only one who survived that project,” Pi says laughing.  “But I think that having gone through that rigorous [process], it made me stronger and helped to build stamina for doing a project like that.” 

That experience really shaped his work and understanding of his own skillset. “It was really art and science coming together”, he explains.

   

And so Oudomsouk’s work with Nomad Design allows him to bridge those distances—the ones between art and science, academic and domestic, the learned skill and the practical know-how. It is no wonder that all kinds of clients seek out Pi and his collaborators for their site-specific installation needs. 

Artist and professional wood worker, Scott (“Scottie”) Bellissemo sat down with this writer at Wave Pool in Camp Washington, where he built and maintains the Wood Shop to share some of the challenges and high points of his creative journey as a Maker in Cincinnati. 

Diagnosed with ADHD as a boy, he struggled in Catholic school until he found an outlet for his active creativity through public school art programs. Bellissemo explains that his parents always said he was “easy to deal with,” because he could be occupied by art supplies all day long. “I just had that imaginary world thing going on in my head as a kid,” he says.  

And that strong foundation in imagination is probably one of the key factors in his creative success.

These days, Bellissemo runs the Wood Shop while simultaneously holding time for an active fine arts practice, and he has been relying solely on making a living from his artistic labor for the past three years. Several years prior to then, the artist had been supplementing his income with nights tending bars and days working in installation at local arts institutions. 

“I just feel really happy to be at a time in my life where I can devote all of my energy to making and teaching,” he says quite genuinely. And it seems clear that his vision for the future of his creative process is being realized.

As early as Second grade, people around him started taking note of his work, Bellissemo attests, and perhaps the crucial element was that he was “hungry to learn it all”. And he has done just that ever since. 

Several crucial moments throughout the next several decades seem to have made a lasting impression on the sculptural artist’s practice. 

In 1996 he met Thom Shaw, one of Cincinnati’s best known and most admired contemporary artists, for an Artists Reaching Classrooms experience during his senior year at Oak Hills High School. His art teacher Jan Thomas, who was like a second mom to him at the time, knew he was struggling and asked Shaw to stay after class to talk to the young artist. 

Bellissemmo recalls of the meeting, “I’ll never forget the time where he said, ‘life is like a bar of gold in a toilet with shit on top of it. To get to that gold, you need to reach through that shit and pull it out.’” And his recounting of the metaphor rings both humorous and true, as Scottie likewise attests that, though it hasn’t been an easy road to trod as a maker, it has been “great.”

During college at the Art Academy of Cincinnati Bellissemo switched from two-dimensional fine art to more sculptural work, focusing on woodworking and glassblowing. But he was adamantly interdisciplinary in his approach—despite the school not having a Mixed Media concentration at the time. He created an artist performance group with AAC professor Gary Gaffney, and team-taught a class on furniture design with Adjunct Faculty member Jack True—all while he was still a student.

After graduation, Bellissemo ran the woodshop at the Art Academy for seven years, where he co-taught classes with other faculty. During his tenure there he helped them moved from the College’s previous home in Mt. Adams to their current Over-the-Rhine location, so he also had the opportunity to build it out from scratch. 

But art jobs aren’t always stable and he admits there were financial struggles and a lack of full time benefits which led him to eventually leave the Art Academy after so many years as both a student and a staff member.  

Bellissemo moved to the San Francisco Bay Area with a friend during the recession but struggled to find work for several months, until taking a trip to the experimental community of Arcosanti in Arizona designed by architect Paolo Soleri. 

Arcosanti, to the uninitiated, is an intentional community focused on minimizing the human footprint. There, Scottie volunteered and worked in the foundry as well as gave tours for about a year and a half, learning various skills and contributing to the community, but eventually returned to Cincinnati.

Always working with his hands, upon his return home Scottie worked preparing trilobites for a local business. He describes the meticulous process of removing the matrix, and preserving the rock they were found on with the same care and consideration as he does in describing his woodworking process—a true sign of a maker: no matter the task, their goal is 

This is clearly a person who enjoys crafting beautiful objects that live in the world, but ultimately have their place of origin in the mind. 

Today, Scottie works independently on various commissioned functional and aesthetically-driven projects—many that come to him via word of mouth—in addition to his own personal art practice. He is driven by materials and processes that allow him to work intuitively, and Bellissemo is a wealth of knowledge and resource for Wave Pool’s community of makers. To date, he has taught over 200 students in small classes of 4-5 people since 2018. 

We can only imagine what the future holds in store for Scottie’s next adventures in making!