About my business name: I wanted to create a word for my business that somehow expressed what I hope for in my creative process - things like productivity and imagination, usefulness and beauty and sweetness. I kept thinking about bees and how they represent things like community cooperation, and work that produces something sweet. I have Italian heritage as well, my Italian ancestors having been tailors and shoemakers (I also have Scottish ancestors who were tailors!), and I wanted to evoke the inspiration they give me. All too often we dismiss art and beauty as being extras rather than necessities, but without art and beauty, I think we are missing some essential pieces of the human experience. I thought the Italian word for bee, ape (pronounced like "ah-pay"), was also so lovely, and bees produce incredible beauty for our world, directly through their honey and honeycombs, and indirectly through their pollination of our important food crops and beautiful flowers. This is similar to how I view art - it directly contributes to beauty in the world in the form of all sort of tangible art, but it also indirectly contributes by inspiring the human soul and communicating feelings and ideas.

And, my daughter’s for my daughter’s first bachelor’s degree she majored in Linguistics at college, minored in Italian, and likes to make constructed languages ("con lang”) that are generated with a free program someone wrote (she is currently working on a second bachelor’s degree in Computer Science). My daughter gave me a bunch of words from one of her constructed languages to play with for my business name. I ended up really liking her con-lang word for "imagine", which is vivriah. Combined, the two words, ape and vivriah became Apevivriah. A studio, of course, is an artist's work room, so I included that in my business name, since the art and artistry is the foundation of what I have to offer.

About my logo: This LeafPearls design is the first image I made when beginning to experiment with surface design and pattern repeats, and it's still my favorite. I drew it with colored pencils on paper, and one of these days I will turn it into a proper logo - probably with a bee or two added!

About Me: I am a United States American, Generation X woman, wife, and mother. My children are now each in their 20s, both of them have ADHD (my husband also has ADHD), and Auditory Processing Disorder (I also have Auditory Processing Disorder), and one of them also is Autistic (this also runs in the family). Both of my children are very bright. All of this has hugely influenced their school experience, and thus also my experience as a mother, and especially as a human being. I live in beautiful Longmont, Colorado (Cheyenne, Arapaho, Ute), which is in Boulder County and just East of the Rocky Mountains. Our closest National Park is Rocky Mountain National Park, less than an hour’s drive away. Long’s Peak and Mount Meeker are the twin mountain peaks that we can see from our lovely little city.

I've been an artist since my early years, and studied art or design through high school and college. I never did finish those degrees because at the time I kept running out of money, and I was afraid of taking on huge student loan debts, since back in the 1990s the general understanding was that art wasn’t a viable career option, and design careers required years of unpaid or low-paying internships. I wasn’t in a position to work without pay or for a wage that didn’t support living expenses, so I ended up just leaving school altogether and working until I became pregnant with my first child. (I did finally complete a bachelor’s degree through a combination of transferred credits, a professional program, and correspondence classes.)

I've kept my hand in creative pursuits one way or another, through various visual arts, fiber arts, cooking, gardening, and I would even say creative approaches to rearing my neurodivergent children through different types of schools in the American school system. Life is a never ending opportunity for continued learning and growth, and I have always dealt with life's ups, downs, curveballs, and delights with an eye towards how I can keep growing and maturing as a person. If you've read this far, you are probably already a friend or family member (ha!). Look for me on Instagram, Facebook as Apevivriah Studio, on Spoonflower as apevivriah_studio, and on RedBubble as Apevivriah.

- Juliana