Wednesday Indie Artist Fixx with Figs and Ginger

Today’s Wednesday Indie Artist Fixx interview is with Rhonda and Elijah Wyman of Figs + Ginger. This is a good one for sure! In full disclosure, I must say that I am a big fan and just love my deer necklace. 😉 Plus, I think they are just adorable, don’t you?

1. What’s the name of your business, what do create and sell and how did you get your start?

We’re Figs & Ginger. We make eco-friendly jewelry inspired by forests. Figs officially started in 2008, but Rhonda went to school for metalworking and we’re a pretty crafty couple, so we’ve been selling stuff under various other business names since 2004 (when we were married).

2. What are your inspirations in your art and life?

We love growing veggies, NPR, books on tape, mountains, swimming in the ocean and not washing the salt out of our hair, playing music, eating delicious food and watching fireflies.  All those things inspire us.

3. What other types of crafty stuff to you do?

Well, Elijah is a musician (folksy singer-songwriter) so we make all of his packaging and merchandise by hand and do all sorts of different things with that. We honestly haven’t had much of a chance to be too crafty for a couple years now as we’ve been super busy. I guess we’ve been most ‘crafty’ in our home by renovating it completely and making most of the stuff in it ourselves. We just bought some land with a barn we are renovating into our new studio so we’ll have space to be crafty again, but we’re so excited to get creative with the barn.

4. What 3 things can’t you live without?

Rhonda – cheese, sharpie pens, books on tape(or cd)
Elijah – Guitar/autoharp, laptop, friends

5. What blogs and mags do you read and what shops do you shop at?

Rhonda- I read mugglenet.com as I have a slight obsession with Harry Potter. Then I’ll read blogs like Tree Hugger, Indie Fixx, GrindingTapes.org, and various design blogs. I also love Dwell, Readymade, & Domino.
  Custom is an awesome boutique in Asheville where I buy most of the dresses I wear.

Elijah – I read Dwell, GrindingTapes.org’s blog, Inhabitat, Readymade and bunches of other blogs I trip over.  I try not to shop too much, but I spend money at Harvest Records in AVL and on delicious food/beer.  If you’re ever in Asheville you need to eat at The Admiral and drink beer at The Wedge.

6. What are you reading, watching and listening to?

Rhonda -just finished the Twilight Series, moving onto American Gods. I don’t actually read books much as I’m always at the bench so I have a vast library of books on my ipod, mostly adventure type stories, so I guess that counts as my listening too. We just finished Arrested Development, and loved it with all of our hearts.

Elijah – Reading American Gods by Neil Gaimen.  Listening to John Vanderslice’s Romanian Names and Death Vessel’s Nothing is Precious Enough For Us. Watching Dead Like Me and Pushing Daisies.

7. What’s new? Any products or projects you’d like to share?

Our wedding line is finally getting underway! We’ve got some great simple wedding jewelry, rings, and bridal jewelry started. We’ll even have some stuff for the fellas.  Oh, and we’re designing products for Farm Sanctuary. We’re going to give 50% of the proceeds from the farm themed line to Farm Sanctuary to help with their work of rescuing animals left for dead at factory farms.