Suzanne Marinelli (and a picture of the granddaughters!)

Who's Suzanne Marinelli, anyway?

I made my first weaving the day I stopped smoking cigarettes (May 13, 1978; I still remember the day). I needed something – anything – to do with my hands that didn't involve holding a cigarette or choking someone. I walked through the jungle down to the ocean, collecting vines, roots and driftwood to keep my hands busy, and almost accidentally made my first weaving.

Growing up proud in a tiny coal mining camp in the southern Appalachian mountains, I learned how little we really need, and how much can be garnered from the often unnoticed resources around us. I would have been astonished if anyone had told me I was poor; that simply wasn't how we thought. Our lives were rich in ways that mattered.

That upbringing has informed my whole life, whether I was living in the Caribbean, in Virginia, or in Hawaii. When Hurricane 'Iniki destroyed my home in 1992, I remember thinking, "We fall down. We either get up and go again, or we stay down." So I grieved, got up, rearranged the pieces of my life, and kept going. Kept creating. Kept seeking treasure "amid the garbage and the flowers" (quoting Leonard Cohen).

We have one earth, one life, one chance. Most of my work is created from recycled, recyclable, or cast-off materials – scrap-yard wire has been my favorite resource these last few years. I see art as a way to reclaim, restore, re-create. Our tangled, troubled human lives and situations, handled lovingly, can be shaped into things of grace, strength, and beauty. What is lost may be found. What is broken may be mended. What is destroyed may be given new life and seen in new and different ways. Thank goodness.

I may never get wealthy doing art work, but that doesn't matter. In ways that really matter, I've been wealthy all along.

Suzanne Marinelli
Cell: 808 778 8257
Website: http://www.mostlywoven.com.