Personal Narrative: Rubriataki

Beginning in the fifth grade, people knew me as the boy who spent his summers creating and selling fused glass jewelry. Although this is no longer the most important part of who I am, much of what I do is informed by the lessons I learned during this time: using creativity as a tool, paying taxes, building websites, salesmanship, networking, providing customer service and goal setting.

I was ten when I founded Rubriataki. I named my company with a word I created to represent the principles I hoped to instill in my work: Rubriataki, noun - the art of reflecting the world’s beauty in miniature form. My mother taught me to create jewelry, how to cut and layer sheets of opalescent and patterned glass into small pieces and melt them into stunning pendants and earrings. I fell in love with the art; the intricacies of it became the perfect outlet for my growing creative passions. I spent hours sitting in my studio loft cutting shards of brilliant blue, jade, and gold-purple. Balancing and pairing them I built miniature works of art, all to be melted
A wooden folding table missing several chunks of surfacing bore my name. Over it I spread an old blue sheet - later in my career (i.e. the next year) I would buy a new black sheet, which appeared to me more professional. I set up the old picture frame my dad and I had converted into my first display. On green wire hooks I placed thirty cards bearing my jewelry. True to the spirit of Rubriataki I had given each piece a unique name: Sleeping Beauty, because the vine pattern reminded me of the fairy tale, Chagall, after the famous artist, and Jester Checks, a checkerboard necklace of red and yellow that, because it was so unappealing, I’ve never managed to sell. At that fair I sold five pieces and was introduced to a woman from a neighboring town who invited me to participate in a much larger holiday show that