Today we are checking out Louisiana Etsy Street Team Member Duygu from BonJukebox
You can check out her shop at bonjukebox.etsy.com
Please tell us where (what city in Louisiana) you live?
Living in and loving New Orleans! But I am actually from Turkey and I am a graduate student here.
What kind of work do you do?
I make mainly jewelry and I use clay to make the beads. But I also make picture frames and recently some sculptures using clay.
What do you consider your main creative influences? minor?
Everything started with my mum. She is a painter (also an arts teacher) and has a lot of knowledge on many different arts and crafts techniques. When I was a kid she would always come up with new ideas and new things to do, from oil painting to using coping saw for cutting out my own pencil box and painting it. At those times, there was no arts and crafts stores in Turkey, neither we knew the polymer clay existed. So she had a great “recipe” for a kind of play dough (made of glue, flour and water). I would shape them into pendants, stick some pine cone pieces, paint and varnish. This is how I started making my own jewelry (and needless to say, all my friends were jealous so I had to make some for them as well :) This is a picture of my mum and me, and the shelf on the wall has only a few of the stuff she was making at the time these pictures were taken.
Growing up with a mum like her, with a hundred books on famous painters, with her creativity and energy, I think it will not be too “arrogant” of me to say that I became -at least a little bit- like her (well, she is still the “master” of course).
Too bad (well maybe not so bad), I was also very much into science and life was (and still is) hard for artists in Turkey, so having good grades at school I've become a biologist and now I am working towards my Ph.D (and I'm proud to be a geek :).
However, I loooveee and appreciate any kind of arts. One of my favorite painters since my childhood is Van Gogh, and I think the fact that my jewelry is very colorful reflects this taste. I like abstract art a lot, I like the simple but meaningful, I like weird art. I am also a big big fan of Hans Bellmer, the surrealist photographer who made life-sized dolls and took pictures of them.
I should finally mention that Turkish culture and art was also a lot of inspiration to me. Below there are two pictures, first one is from a Turkish traditional bead store (if you have heard of “evil eye” beads -
Turkish name is nazar boncuğu- you might recognize some of them in the picture). The second picture is a traditional Turkish necklace you can fınd on my Etsy shop. It is called “husband finder” in Turkey because it has real clove seeds that smell sooo nice, and traditionally young girls used to wear these necklaces.
What Markets do you participate in in the area/region/state/nationally?
Bywater Art Market.
I'm also planning to participate in the Midcity Art Market.
When did you join Etsy and how has it impacted your business?
Well lets see... It's going to be a year in January, but I was not active for a while because of school. So, I can't say there has been much “business” going on since I've been setting my shop up recently. However, Etsy inspired and encouraged me to spend more time on jewelry again and that is how I decided to participate in local art markets. It is great to meet new people both on Etsy and at art markets and share ideas.
Any advice for new sellers?
I'll consider myself a new seller on Etsy as well even though I've been selling my jewelry here and there for many years now. But being and Etsy addict for almost a year, I can clearly see that good photography of your items is the most important thing. And this is what I am working on nowadays.
