WOMEN WHO INSPIRE: ELENA BOIARDI

If these past 11 months have taught me anything, it’s to constantly look for the joy in our day to day lives. Some days finding the silver lining in things is pretty easy and when it’s not, I look for help from my friends. One friend who always puts a smile on my face is Elena Boiardi (of E Boiardi Studio), all I have to do is check out her Instagram stories and I instantly have a smile on my face. 

I first met Elena at a kick-off meeting for Heading Home to Dinner, the dine by design fundraising event I co-founded to benefit Heading Home, Inc.  My friend introduced her to me and said she’s looking for a partner to design a table and would I be interested?  Since I’m all about collaboration I immediately said yes!…then I saw her ceramics with the gorgeous shagreen pattern and I was hooked! Needless to say, I think our table was the best one because of her beautiful dinner plates.  Working with her was such a fun experience and I admired how she juggled working on her ceramics business and being a mom to 3 young boys.   This was all pre-pandemic but we worked virtually through FaceTime and also in person to work with her schedule.

I love following her Instagram account and I highly recommend you do too for a daily dose of beauty and joy. The times where she’s talking through her thought process on her designs and showing us the layers of her glazing is unbelievable fun. She’s also all about a lot of positivity and sharing! So if you’re thinking about creating a business and believe having small kids won’t allow you to do it, think again! Elena will show you how it’s done, with a few rainbows and sparkles thrown in for good measure.

Kristen: What’s unique about your product/service?

Elena: At face value, I make colorful ceramics that are inspired by shagreen. Second tier to that, is that I view the work as functional paintings not ceramics. I’m a painter who works with glaze like I would paint and I make marks over the entire surface by hand. Every single dot, every piece I create is different and unique and takes a lot of time and focus. A deeper meaning of shagreen is in the dots. They are my effort to control chaos and they’re what brings focus to my life helping me navigate through grief and challenge. Shagreen is my mantra. 

Kristen: If you had to start over from scratch, knowing what you know now, what would you do differently?

Elena: I would begin with a business consult. Bring all of my ideas and product and say, HI THERE! …here are my ideas. I know exactly how I would like to design and present my work, now please help me put this into an organized online format so that correspondence is recorded and tracked. I have all of the ideas and enthusiasm but I need that business person/technology support to plugin the framework. 

Kristen: What’s the most important business or other discovery you’ve made in the past year?

Elena: Accessibility…Instagram is a forum for conversation. The biggest light bulb was “I can send a message to my art heroes and open a conversation!” That idea has been exciting to me, walking through art museums and swooning over the brushstrokes in a painting or pouring over a book about Bonnard’s paintings and referencing them to the photos of his subject in the bathtub is inspiring but this idea that, we as designers, artists etc.. can glean the visual and seek out those people who we want to know more about and possibly connect with is FABULOUS! For example I’m enamored by Ron Nicole’s floral reliefs. I sent her a message and connected over nature. Lizzie Fortunato jewelry owned by twin sisters with an amazing aesthetic and business marketing model…I messaged them and eventually met them in person! Dunes and Duchess…I’ve been a long time fan because of the design, their use of color and work ethic. Through conversation over direct message I feel like I’ve met Stacy in person. She has given me advice, we’ve talked fashion and her stylist Bartley Johnstone of B. Johnstone co. has become an incredible friend too, who I talk often with about art and fashion.  There are just so many of these wonderful connections and the point is: the fuel that keeps the fire lit is connecting with other artists. I can be a mother, a working artist and feel like I’m a part of a creative world even if I am very much at home with young children.

Kristen: What’s one of the toughest decisions you’ve had to make and how did it impact your life?

Elena: Oh gosh that’s tough one. So, I’m going to address this as an artist. The toughest decision was to let oil painting go…for now. When I painted with oils I spent long hours working outside on location with my Jeep acting as my traveling paint box. When I started a family though, oil painting in the way I knew and wanted to know, simply wasn’t realistic because my time, focus and energy was funneled into being a mother. I constantly wrestled with feeling like I should be painting and felt completely frustrated by not having the time or energy so, I just completely let oil painting go. I was better off because I wasn’t constantly tortured by what I wasn’t doing. For about six years I didn’t make art, in the way I used to, and looked at creativity in other ways like cooking, observing, and taking visual notes. I got back into making art three years ago. Ceramics is an accessible art form for my lifestyle with three young kids. It’s nontoxic, easy cleanup and the thought process of painting the same pattern along with the repetition creates focus. One day I’ll paint with oils again but I’m happy where I am right now.

Kristen: What accomplishment are you most proud of, and why?  

Elena: As a person, being a mother to three children. As an artist, starting a small business from scratch that has connected me to an incredible group of people I might not otherwise meet. 

Kristen: What is currently the biggest challenge to your success and how are you handling it?

Elena: Correspondence. I have an incredible work ethic. I work really hard and there are many steps to my process, but when it comes down to returning the emails and direct messages, taking new orders when I’m already working on a large group, that’s a real problem for me. I can’t multitask to save my life and I’m using both hands to make the work, so dictating a message or taking a call while working is not an option. The idea of hiring someone to organize and respond to email/take orders seems like extra added work because I’m so focused on my art. It’s tough to do business and art at the same time. A lot of what’s going on in my head while I’m in the throws of working is colors, design etc. I do love to have conversations and there have been so many wonderful connections and projects but it’s just now that I’m at a place where I can’t keep up AND make work. Moving forward I hope to streamline by focusing on large orders for the shops I work with who take some of the correspondence off my plate, making custom to the trade only and eventually offering the work I make as I go along in an e-commerce shop, likely Shopify.

Kristen: How did mentors influence your life?

 Elena: I have been blessed by amazing teachers all along who have believed in me, who I admire and love and I know they love me. The mentors I call on the most right now are two artists who I adore because of the way they use color and because they lead their lives with kindness; Tim Hansen and Liz Roache. I have called on them to ask advice on business and navigating collaborative relationships. Liz I’ve known for some time, she’s known me as a young artist, before I had children and as a mother. I’ve always admired her work and been awestruck by her use of color. Liz is joy, quite simply, she lives what she makes. She is warm and kind and honest. Tim Hansen, I met a couple years ago at an artists pop up at the Boston Design Center and we are kindred spirits really. I have only seen him in the flesh once but I talk with him frequently, have called him when I really needed advice and adore him. I admire his process and connection to nature, his history as an artist and father. These two are my mentors because I love their work, they are hard working, and they represent my idea of success because it’s not business driven rather their business is sharing joy and that’s what leads to their success.

Kristen: What’s your favorite way to spend your free time?

 Elena: Outdoors. Mother Nature is my grounding force. I find so much inspiration and peace in nature, specifically looking for color season to season and really soaking it in, taking visual notes. In the Summer, it’s walks on the beach, shells and water.  Fall, the changing leaves. Spring, new life emerging, bright color peeking out. Winter, one may not think of much color then but that’s when I look to the sky, subtle color balanced with saturated early sunsets.

Kristen: What mantra do you live by?

Elena: Positive vibes…sure it’s printed on t-shirts but I believe in it. Quite simply, if you can radiate what brings you joy, and another resonates with that, they then radiate that light and joy and so on and so on and you begin a chain of light that can only create good. The spectrum comes from light, simply put, color does not exist in darkness.