Interview with Sylvia from StarLust Designs
Words by Emilee Stewart
A difficult summer left Sylvia's nervous system in shock, causing anxiety and depression to creep back into her life. In an attempt to pull herself out from under that dark cloud, she agreed to go huckleberry picking with a friend. As she picked the huckleberries, the foreign feeling of serenity calmed her mind and body. “This is what it feels like to feel calm”, she thought to herself in realization. Shortly after, she remembered that huckleberry picking was a short two-month escape, which caused her revelation sadness to overwhelm her. Crushed, Sylvia continued to pick berries letting herself embrace the new found peace. Letting her mind wander as she plucked each berry off the branches, beading came to mind.
Her grandma had originally planted the thought into her mind when she gifted teenage Sylvia a pair of beaded earrings from Peru. Young Sylvia was enamored by her first pair of beaded earrings.
Sylvia as a child in Andean clothing
Curious about the earrings, she pondered about the time it took to make them. When she discovered the cost of them, she was disappointed by how such beautiful and hard work was sold for so little.
In that very moment while reminiscing in the berry field, she decided to learn beading. One week later, she went to her local trading post in Montana and bought six different colours of beads. She spent the entire weekend watching YouTube tutorials from other Indigenous bead artists learning techniques and developing her own personal style.
After completing her first pair of earrings, she posted them on Facebook, feeling proud of her achievement while also not thinking much of it other than a continuing hobby. However, soon after, a friend messaged her inquiring how much the pair cost. Surprised by this, Sylvia wasn’t sure how to price them. The friend then promptly offered $100US for the pair - a price Sylvia never thought she could put on her own work. Stunned, she agreed but under the condition that she made a new pair just for them due to minor errors in the original work. Shortly after that first sale, she had a friend model another pair of earrings. That night as she edited the photos, she couldn’t help but feel proud of how beautiful her work turned out to be. That same night, September 3, 2020, she created her Instagram account and posted those pictures. It was one of those situations where she felt scared, but did it anyway. Since then, she's become a full time beader and business owner. Now she sits with ONEUL to share her journey.
Photographer: Aimee Uchida
Models: Pearrie Hammie & Glenda Hernandez Quezada
Makeup: Stephanie Melissa
Venue: @fdphoto_studio
Designer: StarLust Designs
Reconnecting:
With any hobby, comes a community. Initially unknown to Sylvia, the beading community was big and welcoming. Meeting other artists online expanded her community and inspired her as other beaders used beading to help learn about their own culture - many of whom either already knew or are learning their Indigenous language. From time to time, Sylvia would name some pieces in Quechua & K’iche’, the language commonly spoken by her ancestors, and is still spoken to this day in her ancestral lands (Quechua and Mayan territory). Inti was the name of a pair she made which means Sun. Not knowing a single word of Quechua or K’iche’ growing up, and now being able to name a piece of her work in Quechua was her way of reconnecting.
Last fall, Sylvia was able to be a vendor at an event called “Eagle and Condor” for Indigenous Peoples Day (US), named after an Indigenous prophecy; foretelling a time where Indigenous people of the south and north will reunite sharing knowledge, strength, diversity, and connection. The event was open to all, inviting Indigenous peoples from all over America - sharing food, music, and dance.
“I had never experienced anything like that. And I think a lot of people hadn't because a lot of times those worlds are separate… because of colonialism, we view the Americas as segments and we forget that our people, you know, didn't believe… in these colonial borders.” Sylvia shared with awe about her experience. Excited about connecting with more Indigenous peoples, she plans to join the event again, hoping it becomes a monthly occasion.
“The Americas were all colonized. We just had different colonizers. That's what I think of it as. Whether colonized by the French, English, Portuguese, or Spanish, we were all harmed in very similar ways, [Which lead to] displacement and [Indigenous] people moving here. But the United States or Canada would not be my Indigenous land. Had colonization not happened we would probably still be in our Indigenous lands cause they're freaking gorgeous.” She continued as she explained her belief about decolonising.
The Business:
As a full time beader and business woman, beading has given Sylvia a flexible schedule, allowing her to attend workshops, have some “me time”, and most importantly, spend more time with her daughter. “Being a solo mom, [my business has] opened up my time with my daughter but also made it easier to pick her up from school. I don't have to call into work if she's sick. I'm just already here”, Sylvia tells ONEUL as she explains how StarLust Designs have changed her day to day life. Sylvia's daughter also started to pick up beading. She explains to ONEUL that her daughter hasn't started weaving but at the moment she is really into clay beads. Before, her daughter made sun catchers, and now, beading started becoming something her daughter does along with her. “I can tell she's enjoying it, she's really got an eye for colour and patterns for sure”, Sylvia says proudly.
Though her business has helped her with a more flexible schedule, Sylvia has spent up to 24 hours on a pair, from the design to the finished product. The piece in question was a pair of fringe earrings featuring the Terrapin Turtles from The Grateful Dead.
Sylvia’s Earring Design featuring the
Terrapin Turtles from the Grateful Dead
However, her personal favourite that she made was a beaded flower cactus she created when she first moved to LA. “I was walking and I saw a cactus with flowers. It was like the prickly pear cactus and the flowers were blooming. I don't know, they just brought me so much joy on my walk. I was doing a lot of walks when I first moved here because the transition was really hard and walking kept me sane. I took a picture of them and I can't remember if I knew at that moment that I would make a pair of earrings. I played around on the iPad and made a couple of pairs of those”. Although Sylvia hopes to remake them, they're a lot of work despite their high demand. “I got requests to remake them and I did remake a few. I have a couple of people who have asked me to DM them if I ever make them again. We'll see. Maybe in the future.”
Left: Sylvia’s Flower Cactus Earring Design. Right: Flower Cactus Inspiration
Sylvia’s process changes from design to design. Testing new patterns, new colours, and even free styling. Sometimes she’ll go back to old designs and add a new twist - so not all hope is lost when it comes to bringing back the flower cactus earrings.
Sylvia’s short term goal is to do one or two pop up shops a month. “They’ve been super fun. I feel like meeting people in a city is so hard because there's so many people and everyone's like sprawled out. It's harder to come across like-minded people. That's my biggest goal because I really miss a community and having them.” In the future, Sylvia hopes to help artisans in Peru and Guatemala (where her parents are from), to sell their work for a price worth the hard hours of labour. “That's kind of like a long-term vision. And I would need to feel a lot more stable and have the funds and the energy for that. Once my daughter is older, and [more independent], then maybe I could put my energy into something like that.”
The business has helped her in many ways: a new hobby, a new income, a new lifestyle and new opportunities. Sylvia met a woman from Colorado through mutual friends, who introduced her to a nonprofit organisation called “Undestructable”. Undestructable helps domestic violence survivors learn new craftsmanship skills that can help lead to job opportunities and income, as well as skill sets that help process trauma. Hearing about them really resonated with Sylvia, as a survivor herself, she recalls that leaving her abuser was a very lonely and financially difficult time. “I didn't even have any money to pay the next month's rent and so something like this [Undestructable] would have just been huge. I stand with Undestructable and their vision so I wanted to help again this year." In 2021, she donated a pair of shoes and earrings, and this last October, she tried something new. During domestic violence awareness month in October 2022, Sylvia hosted a raffle to win one of four earrings. To enter, donate to Undestructable and direct message Sylvia a receipt of the donation; every $10 dollars counts as a ticket. “It's already generated more than the one pair of earrings last year. So I hope that we can reach our goal.” Sylvia later shared on Instagram that the raffle generated $302 USD to the organization. Though her business gives back to people who are currently in situations she once was in, she wouldn't necessarily say it has helped her with getting out of her last abusive relationship, but it did help her with a sense of empowerment.
Sylvia was asked if she had a message she wanted young Indigenous and Latinx people to hear before wrapping up the interview: “Our work is devalued, compared to something produced by a white person. I can't back down on my pricing. My work is just as valuable as if somebody white had made it or a big brand name. I just hope that BIPOC creators in general can really start to know how valuable they are and really believe in themselves. I want them to really believe that down to their core and to show up in that way. I know it's a personal decision at the end of the day to be able to afford to charge less or whatever, but most of us can’t. And I just really hope to see more people, more BIPOC people, charging well for their work”, she answered. The final message Sylvia has for the readers: “Sometimes we want to know what's going to happen. We want to know what the future holds for us and we want to be in control. I'm so guilty of this, but I think that the way that my beadwork started happened organically. Sometimes we doubt ourselves. How am I ever gonna have a website? I don't know the first thing about websites or how am I going to do a pop-up? How do you even sign up for a pop-up? These are all little things that in my mind I didn't really know how they were gonna work out, but just by taking it one step at a time and going with the flow, things just happen. You don't have to have it all figured out right now. Like you can just take one step at a time and figure it out along the way.”
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Article edited and proofread by Bona Lee