Today we’d like to introduce you to Rianna Alvarado.
Hi Rianna, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
I’d love to! I always loved the art of creativity itself. As a young child, I would spend hours drawing, writing poems, and watching the sky through the branches of our mimosa tree. I felt most myself outside among the iris and the worms. I spent my young adult years experimenting with various creative processes until finally landing on oil painting. I loved the silky texture and the feeling of creating a picture through mere smears on the canvas. I began to incorporate my two passions at the time together and paint the photos I took.
When life happened, and I married and began raising a family, I adapted by teaching my children the art of making. We painted messily together, explored the camera, and soon planted a garden. With the random gift of 3 ducks came the unstoppable desire to have a farm and experiment with creativity in the cultivated world of the garden. I designed a chicken coop that was practical and pleasing to the eye, my kids and I painted surrounded by vibrant poppies and the intoxicating scent of ripening plums. It was a beautiful crashing of two of my favorite things tied up beautifully with the art of motherhood itself.
Fast forward through years of making wooden toys for the kids, watching them learn to crawl under fig trees and eat dirt from a newly made garden bed, and here I was teaching art to their friends. It opened up a new world to me of sharing this life I had been cultivating and living for years while raising my children to other families. I saw for the first time this ease in the outdoor world doesn’t come naturally for everyone, that art itself can be intimidating and also so very wanted and needed to many other homeschooling families.
I began to dream of doing this on a larger scale. I dreamed of a children’s art studio that opened up to a grand garden. A garden with scents and textures, with wonder and imagination, made real in the form of petals and stomas. A garden with life underfoot that asked to be investigated. I held this dream for years while teaching at our local college and still raising children.
In 2018 on the cusp of having my fourth child, I dove in, creating an art summer camp designed to fully immerse the student in as many mediums of art as I could come up with. The rest in history as they say, and in 2019, I began the tedious and infectiously wonderful world of creating a business around the merging of the natural world, gardening, and art itself. Artphoria Studio and Garden was born, and I have been bringing nature through the lens of curiosity and creativity to children ever since!
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back, would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Ha! No not smooth at all. My youngest was 1 when I began this journey, and balancing the needs of the home, homeschooling, and learning how to run a business felt overwhelming most of the time. Fortunately, my husband backed me 100% which made it easier on the rough days. Smooth roads are maybe given too much credit. I have found that on the bumpy, curvy, not-at-all-predictable road, I have grown in sooo many ways. I am, without a doubt, a better mother, creator, and person because I was brave enough to say yes to my dreams.
It’s a dream to be able to stay at home with my children and school them the way we feel is good as a family. But most, if not all, of us have more than one dream. I hope any mother reading this will know that it is not just ok to have dreams outside of your role but good too. How will our children ever know the true us if we don’t.
So, while it has not been a smooth road, it’s been a wild one, and I wouldn’t choose an easier alternate route if I could!
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar, what can you tell them about what you do?
At its core, my current work is inspiring families. I created a Creativity Studio for children and their families where we use nature as our muse. So, we will work with mosaics for example, by covering a chicken garden statue in tile as art for the garden. This introduces them to a new medium while also showing the value of collaborative work.
The students will learn how to use a drill by building a cold frame for the garden or by making their own flower press. I teach very hands-on as I believe it is the experiences in life that stick with us. If we are serious about educating our children, we should pay attention to that.
This approach is very unique in that I am combing the natural world with the wonderful world of art. I endeavor to see life without boxes and lines, and by allowing children the gift of creating in a garden environment, I find their inhibitions melt away, and they are free to express themselves and really learn.
I really love an art camp we recently did this past winter. I called it “Earthy Art Camp” and the premise was to use materials from the earth to create as many art supplies as we could. So, we burned sticks in our fire pit to make charcoal, we ground rocks found in a river to make paint pigment, and we melted beeswax and made crayons. It was incredible, and the children left feeling a wonderful sense of pride in their new bag of art supplies but also with a better sense of where these materials come from, to begin with.
I approach life and my business with enthusiasm and excitement and I think that translates to the children I serve.
We love surprises, fun facts, and unexpected stories. Is there something you can share that might surprise us?
Hmm, maybe my mindfulness practice. I really love meditation and have really found a new passion this year in working on a consistent practice. It’s one of my favorite parts of the day, and I truly believe it can change lives.
Contact Info:
- Website: http://www.warmhoneytoast.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/warmhoneytoast/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ArtphoriaStudioGarden
Image Credits
Rianna Alvarado
Joshua Palmer
