It’s only natural that Ashley and Scott McLean’s art is part of their marriage.
A similar environmentalist influence can be seen in the couple’s respective crafts: jewellery design for Ashley, and furniture-making for Scott.
Currently Ashley is creating earrings and necklaces from natural materials including stone and leather. They are sold locally under the name natures.lovelies.
It was on an anniversary trip to BC that Ashley found inspiration for her stone earrings.
“I was just sitting on the beach for two hours, picking stones,” she recalls. “Scott’s, like, ‘What are you gonna do with all these stones?”
Scott laughs at the memory.
“I don’t know!” Ashley remembers responding. “I’ll put them in a jar or something.”
But the jar remains empty after inspiration struck.
“I’ve never really looked at stones or realized how beautiful they were,” Ashley says. “I could just stare at those stones … teals and purples…”
Ashley paired the stones and mounted them to earring posts. She also crafts earrings from strips of leather, sometimes embellished with local wild rice. Her necklace designs include larger stones tied macramé-style and strung on natural thread.
While in BC, Ashley and Scott went to a market on Salt Spring Island. “Everyone there is local vendors, and everything there is handmade, and
I loved that,” she says.
She ended up in conversation with a woman from Winnipeg who sells hand-dyed clothing. It made her think.
“I was like, wow … I should start doing that instead of just doing everything for myself.”
On her return to Flin Flon Ashley set to work making jewellery from the stones she had collected.
She approached The Orange Toad about selling some pieces, “’cause I don’t know what I’m going to do with them otherwise,” she laughs.
She also posted her designs on a Facebook page she shares with her husband.
“From there all these people are messaging me and now I’m mailing a couple out to people and I was like, oh my gosh, I don’t have enough supplies …”
Flin Flon Yoga also responded by asking for a display stand to sell from the studio.
The first 15 pairs at the Toad almost sold out the first weekend.
“I didn’t think people would actually be that interested,” Ashley says.
But they are, and Ashley guesses she’s sold at least 40 pairs of earrings in a month, as well as a couple of necklaces. She’s thinking of adding bracelets to her line.
New life for wood
Scott is similarly influenced by what he sees in the world around him, and his furniture designs are also the result of moments of inspiration.
Driftwood, drift boards, reclaimed kitchen blocks and doors, old furniture – Scott’s talent is to see what they might become, and then to give them new life as beautiful furniture pieces.
“I’ve always liked furniture,” says Scott, who has two years of carpentry on his resume. “I’ve always looked at furniture and thought how it was made – the material, the wood out of it – and then I just [thought], ‘I can do that.’”
“If he sees an old piece of wood, he’s like, ‘Oh, I can make that with it,’ ” Ashley adds.
“It’s just sitting there … wherever it is … and turning it into a beautiful piece of furniture or something, that’s really cool, I think,” Scott says.
Social media has also been instrumental in connecting Scott with potential opportunities. Photos of his furniture generate a flurry of comments and likes – and requests.
“There were people we didn’t even know messaging us,” says Ashley.
Queries came from as far away as Saskatoon, and commentors wanted to know where they were located, and whether they ship, “and we’re like, ‘Whoa whoa …’” laughs Ashley.
“It’s really cool,” she adds. “Some local people that we didn’t even know bought a coffee table [from] us, so we were very thrilled.”
Local market
Scott and Ashley were both born and raised in Flin Flon. Ashley currently works at Hudbay Human Resources, Benefits and Scott is a journeyman plumber.
While it is a hobby right now, art as a living is something they’d love to do.
But they don’t see the same homegrown market here that they found on the west coast.
“I think a lot of people have interest in it but maybe they thought the same as me, [that] there’s no market for it, really,” Ashley says. “So they just make [art] for themselves or their friends.”
Ashley credits the NorVA Centre as being a place for artists to come together. She has taken classes at the centre, and says she feels at home when she goes there.
“This is a nice town place to just do art and learn [from] people,” she says. “I love going there.”
Scott agrees that NorVA is a good resource.
“I think that Flin Flon’s very rich [in] talent,” he adds.
Working together
Ashley and Scott have matching tattoos of trees, Ashley on her right arm, Scott on his left. They got them for their one-year anniversary.
“The tree symbolizes to me anything you go through in life … your strength …” Ashley says.
“… our love for nature,” Scott adds.
The couple can often be found working together in the garage, where Scott maintains his shop.
“We’re always doing things together,” Ashley says. “We don’t really sit still.”
The couple collaborates and coordinates, with ideas flowing between them.
“I’ll be doing something and it will catch Ashley’s eye,” says Scott.
This can result in Ashley making something new.
“I think we definitely feed off each other,” he says.
“We kind of always ask each other,” Ashley says of creative decisions. “We’re like … hmmm … and we sit back, and look at it, and look at it again. So it’s not like he’s doing projects alone.”
When asked if their creativity helps their relationship, they answer at the same time: “I think so.”
“We just trust each other, and we build each other up,” says Ashley.
“It’s a good thing,” Scott says.
And like the trees represented by their tattoos, “we’ll be standing strong together.”
Scott and Ashley’s work can be found on Facebook at Hang Loose handcrafted wood furniture and natures.lovelies.
