Fatal Attraction

Today's featured etst artist, the first of the new year, is actually a couple: Gale and Brad Bez of Fatal Attraction. They make beautiful jewelry, artwork, and even clothing. They also run another shop on etsy, Tattered Rouge: How did you pick your shops names? Fatal Attraction was picked with the idea in mind that we would offer unique artworks: jewelry and a small selection of other items, such as steampunk pieces, digital collages/ACEOs. Hopefully peeps would find themselves super (fatally) attracted to our work. Our apparel and accessories shop, Tattered Rouge is named to be reflective of our vintage and newer deconstructed-reconstructed boudoir inspired clothing. This may be obvious, but what is your medium? What kinds of materials and tools do you use? At Fatal Attraction we utilize all the materials and tools of a traditional jewelry studio. At this point in time, due to the economic situation in this country, we are selling a line of filigree based jewelry that is priced on the lower end of our customary pricing range. From time to time, we do list more expensive pieces that are inclusive of higher end gemstones and fine metals. At Tattered, we source vintage items to use in our reconstructs, such as turn of the century through 1950's clothing and hats, vintage jewelry, vintage fabrics, in addition to new materials. Must have my trusty sewing machine to do this work and I spend hours on hand work, as well. The hand sewing is a meditation for me. I enjoy it tremendously. It's an emotional connection to the previous generation of women in my family who spent their evenings visiting with each other over their crochet projects, tatting, embroidery and such. Takes me back - lol. Tell me a little bit about your process, from a new idea for a piece to the finished product. For us, it most always the materials themselves that inspire us. With our jewelry making, it's one initial find, such as a wonderful gemstone or textured metal that starts the process. From this one piece, I usually sketch out a full collection of pieces that all visually relate to that first piece of inspiration. With our Steampunk items, we are capturing the essence of a theme, a historic referenced time period. All the pieces revolve around one central idea. With this in mind, I actively search out vintage items such as old clockworks, keys, tarnished brass from which we create the Steamy pieces. With our clothing line, again, we work within specific topic…items that you would find in a well appointed boudoir. Although much of our present apparel collection references early century through the 1940's, we won't limit ourselves only to this time period. Tattered Rouge is a fairly new undertaking for us and as we develop and add more items to our stores, we will introduce some outrageous glam pieces. Costuming has always been a part of our lives, as we have been involved (when we have time) in stage performance for many years. Any business advice for artists/crafters just starting to sell their work? Hang in there!! The past 10 years have been a challenging time for people working in all the creative fields. All we can say is if you love to make things, then don't stop or give up. You may have to keep a day job and make your artwork in your off hours until this dratted economical mess turns around. Just remember, the pendulum always swings back and the arts will be strongly supported and flourish once again. Just keep making your artwork! Do you know the artist/crafter who nominated you for this interview? Yes, Victoria is a fellow member of our Etsy SteamTeam and was one of the first people who bought work from our Fatal Attraction store. We are quite fond of her and of her artwork. She is a very elegant, classy woman! [Victoria was featured here in December 2008] What is the last song/album you listened to? (I'm just curious, I love music.) Oh my! LOL - I have a very eclectic and wide range of musical tastes - used to sing semi-professionally. Most recently, I listened to music from my collection of female torch singers, American and European jazz artists. Do you sell your work anywhere other than etsy? Yes, we maintain a business website: http://www.bez-jewelry.com and just recently set up a shop at 1000 Markets: http://www.1000markets.com/users/enchantement We utilize many other online placements to drive business to our stores and from time to time, we show our work in galleries and juried shows. Are there other websites where we can find you? We're pretty active in the ether net world. We think of it as a great way to advertise and market our work. http://www.tatteredrouge.blogspot.com http://wwwfatalattract.blogspot.com http://gallery-press.blogspot.com/ We're also at myspace and facebook and we love Twitter! So much fun……..