Cari Buziak
by Sigrid Wynne-Evans
Cari
|
If there is any designer on this site that I would pick as being successful as an artist, I would have to say Cari can claim that distinction, hands down. She has succeeded as an artist in ways I can only dream about. Being able to work/play in a field she loves, and being very successful, even having had the thrill to work for a celebrity, is something many of us fantasize about!
|
Cari has lived in Canada her entire life, in several cities and provinces. Her favorite roost is Calgary, which is where she is living now. Cari says that it is a city with great entrepreneur spirit, lots of energy, and a good craft and arts atmosphere, having Banff only two hours away is also a benefit.
After High School, Cari spent 2 years in 'Bio Sciences' at a University, but she left after she realized that as fascinating as the human body is, it just wasn't something that she wanted to do for 14 hours a day! While she was in junior high and high school, she spent a lot of time in drama and various theater shows and productions, from direction to acting (mostly acting), so she always figured that she would return to that. It was quite a surprise to Cari when her fun sketches and faerie paintings began to get such good feedback. When she ventured into Celtic art, and uploaded her first web site, the reaction was great, although the idea of making a living at such a "niche" career did not seem like a possibility. Cari kept doing the Celtic art because historical and cultural artwork has always been her passion, from medieval sagas to museum artifacts, so the flavor of Celtic art was something she really enjoyed. It was old... unique, had a lot of history, and a lot of color and detail.
As more and more requests came in for Cari's paintings for gallery shows, or book covers, or t-shirts, the amount of artwork she was doing grew and grew. And as a result, so did her web site! Cari had to learn html to build the site, which was a new skill and a little frustrating to her. The last programming class that Cari had was in grade 10 and as much as she loves detail in her art, the perfection of syntax in programming left her bored out of her mind.
Cari's Design Work.
 
Cari's web site just kept growing and growing, and after two years she was able to quit her job at a local art store and began her freelance illustration full time. It's been steady ever since. Most of the work she does is designing for merchandise that is manufactured by other folks. In addition, Cari is doing more publishing, which is great as licensing really allows her creative time to become much more efficient. She designs once, and then uses that piece of artwork for many uses, so her return for time investment gets better and she is able to tackle a wider variety of projects and do more R & D (Research & Development) into other uses and subjects.
Cari's formal training in art includes taking a life drawing class now and then to try to brush up those skills with her illustration work. But for the historical cultural design or Celtic design, there aren't really any places that you can go to learn. Cari has a huge library in her studio of books, books and more books! Everything from museum collection catalogs to limited reproductions of manuscripts. She is quite a pack rat with books. She admits to being pretty crazy for organization, so all her books are arranged by subject and use and culture. Within the subjects are lots of the old traditional crafts, which is how Cari came across beading.
Cari claims that she has never really become an avid beader herself. She really enjoys problem solving and designing, and as a result, she took up beading mostly to see what the "rules" were and how the pieces came together. What exactly was this "peyote stitch" that she was reading about? How do you make a loom? To Cari, a big draw to beads themselves was the wonderful colors and the rich shine each one has. Cari has done weaving, basketry, cross stitch, pottery, knitting, stained glass and tons of other traditional crafts. Cari discovered that the beads really had a gorgeous palette to work with. Beading allowed her to explore the strict structural needs (the shape of a bead, the pattern made by the various stitches) with these gorgeous colors, and that really appealed to her. While Cari does do some beadwork, she finds the real challenge and enjoyment from designing within the beading demands, rather than the execution of the final project.
Cari found the Bead-Patterns web site through her research 'on-line' about beading. She knew the enormous amount of work involved in self publishing, inventory, stock, shipping, etc, so when she saw that Bead-Patterns.com takes care of most of that, she was really excited.
Cari works on a Mac (6 in her studio, including laptops and scanning stations and printer towers) and it didn't take her too long to find Beadscape and buy a copy! After that, Cari bought the bead cards so she could see the real life beads in her "palette". From there, she began her first patterns. Obviously Celtic designs are a greater portion of what she does, but some have a more fantasy flair. Cari says: "The Chess Sets", were kind of a neat idea late one night. Little pillow packs with a design beaded on top, and a board that you could easily make yourself. I think a lot of folks also get a copy of the Chess Sets just to make tiny amulet bags or earrings from the designs, which is another great idea as you get a bunch with the one pattern, so that's handy. I also really like my Kitty Guardian Angel, I think she's just too cute, and my favorite things to design now are larger tapestry pieces. The amount of detail and complexity you can include in a larger beaded piece I think gets really interesting and you have room to create some really gorgeous designs! So right now I'm having fun working on larger pieces like this."
Click on an image to view the pattern.
 
Cari has a studio apartment in the heart of downtown Calgary, with a direct view of the mountains all day long. She shares the space with her husband, who also does design and advertising, their two cats, and a new little hamster girl who is new and at present nameless. Cari and her husband both love all kinds of animals, so one day when they upgrade the studios she is sure it will be crawling with even more furry beasts. Since it is just Cari, her husband and all their "kids", they work and live in the studio all day together! The studio has 3 Macs, 3 printers, 2 scanners, various disk drives and backup devices, and then another bunch of computers, laptops and monitors set up in another room with a TV, for taking breaks or working out there for a switch. Cari runs dual monitors, and dreams of an Apple Studio Display one day when she buys a new G5. A normal work day for Cari is about 12 hours, but some of that is R&D. She works on her own projects as well as client projects. Cari is in the enviable position of being able to work in a "day job" that she also considers "play". For Cari, it is hard to draw a line and say how long a work day is. She figures... if she is watching the Space channel or CSI, then it's NOT work, and whatever's left is either work or sleep.
Cari would love to have a published book of a collection of patterns (probably of a Celtic theme!). But for now, Cari is happy with how things are set up in B-P.com. She is having fun working on tapestries and designing the bigger pieces.
Click on an image to view the pattern.
 
When asked what Cari feels is her biggest accomplishment, she said that she is "excited and relieved to be able to basically have fun all day long at my "job". I'm completely spoiled, and I know it! ;-) But I wouldn't trade it for anything. Currently I'm flown here and there to lecture, I'm doing custom design for celebrities like Don Henley, book covers, jewelry lines, and a clothing line that just launched a few months ago called www.celticoriginals.com. With them I design Irish dance dresses from the sewing patterns up to designing the embroidery to choosing the threads, and we have a great production facility so I have great freedom in what I can design as they can sew just about anything".
Cari's word of encouragement for all of us:
"Inspiration can be found everywhere... so many things with colors, textures, designs and ideas in them that if you can open yourself up you begin seeing so many exciting things in carpets, flowers, wrought iron, tile... so many wonderful things out there to enjoy. If you can start to see these things around you, your brain will be so full of ideas that you'll go insane just trying to find the time to get them out! And with the internet out there as a resource of patterns and community, and as an opportunity for selling your patterns or marketing your ideas, it really is a great time to be creative!"
Cari Buziak
View Patterns
- View Biography - Web Site - e-mail
|
or 
