The Creative Side of Business

My college hiatus ended on the impetus of poetry and dance. I had wanted to create a voice from my travel experience and maintain a career in the arts, which had just started to blossom.

Photo by Loyal Auterson, Missouri State University Fall Dance Concert, 2006, performing a Romani/Oriental fusion dance

Those that know my artistic work during college know that Greece, and its periphery of influence, is a major focal point.

While pursuing my somewhat impractical college degree, I applied the skills I was learning to a number of freelancing gigs. There's one I'm particularly fond of, an ad my older brother and I collaborated on for our parents' Greek-branded jewelry store.

When I saw the piece my mom wanted in the ad, I saw Cretan spirals. I told my brother about the Palace in Knossos.

He found the photo and inlaid the necklace. In its juxtaposition, we tied a major line of jewelry to the store's Greek brand. The copy can be cringe worthy to me, as I read it now years away from my early poetry. But beyond that, the vision behind the ad came from the same place that inspired my wanderlust.  The ad won an award and I became hooked on this type of work - the creative side of business.