Today we’d like to introduce you to Molly McGovern.
Hi Molly, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today.
I officially started my business, Coyote Crafted, this past February of 2022. At Coyote Crafted I design and create handcrafted jewelry and prints inspired by the desert. A desert is a place of solitude – a place of adaptability and resilience. A place where everything is exposed – including ourselves. Through handcrafted earrings with desert motifs, original photography, collage, and digital illustration I aim to capture the sights, sounds, smells, and feelings of this place. My art serves as small reminders of experiences that either shows us our true selves or humble us in the presence of a vast world that the desert represents so well.
What started as a way to raise money for non-profits during the pandemic quickly became what my life was revolving around. The original intention behind what I was making was a connection with each other and with ourselves. I made postcards so folks could write notes to their loved ones that they were missing and couldn’t visit. I was making earrings with rattlesnake vertebrae to symbolize our ability to shed what no longer serves us. It was clear that these concepts spoke to people. It started with just friends, family, and acquaintances purchasing my creations but quickly evolved into more and more people who I’d never met being interested. A few local and regional stores were reaching out to stock my items. I now am so grateful to say this is my full-time job. I sell my work online through my website coyotecrafted.com as well as in-person at Moab Made, Artesian, and Adobe Garden here in Moab, UT. You can also find my jewelry and prints at Red Canyon Company in Hurricane, UT.
It is a surreal feeling, to see how all of the paths in my life have converged to this moment in time. As a kid, making art was by far my favorite hobby. In college, I studied environmental conservation. After graduating, I worked as a research scientist and then a river guide on the Colorado river here in Moab, Utah. Now, I have the great privilege of making art every day, and a portion of every purchase is donated quarterly to a rotation of non-profits that support regional environmental conservation, education, and advocacy. I have the honor to explore these desert rivers and canyons with my fiance and dog, constantly being inspired to learn and create. And through the internet, I am lucky enough to raise awareness about environmental or cultural issues in the desert southwest and connect us all to this place we all love and cherish.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
“Maybe the most genuine parts of any tale are the sputtering and the silences, the acknowledgments of failure, the glimmerings in the dark.” (Hayden Kennedy)
I never thought I was the type of person who would start their own business. Let alone make it my full-time job. In my personal life, I’ve always enjoyed being creative; I’ve been making art my whole life. But in my professional life, I’ve always thrived in positions where I didn’t have to be the one in charge. I never liked having to think of the big picture and prioritize tasks. One of the biggest hurdles for me was the discomfort of self-promotion. Back in 2019, my partner and I were living in a van while we worked seasonal river guiding jobs. We were in-between rafting seasons and living on the streets of San Diego trying to find odd jobs to pay for gas and food until we started our new season. My partner found a lot of work doing carpentry, so I decided I would try selling my art jewelry as my sole source of income. I was selling whatever I could make on my Etsy shop and promoting it on my Instagram page. And thanks to the encouragement from another local vendor…setting up a little table and sold it on the promenade in the city. It was the most terrifying I’ve ever been.
I honestly struggled a lot during this time mentally (and financially). I didn’t know what I was doing at all – I was trying my best but just didn’t know how to balance promoting myself on the internet, making new designs, photographing everything, packaging, and shipping things. The most uncomfortable part for me was feeling like I was commodifying my hobby of making art…it was sucking out the joy and putting too much pressure on myself. Having to post on the internet constantly just to get enough sales felt so ingenuine and forced. I am incredibly grateful for the friends, family, and occasional strangers that purchased my art during this time. I struggled so much with imposter syndrome, and felt like there was no space for me in the creative world…and these purchases were what gave me the strength to keep trying.
After those couple of months, I decided I would never be able to do that again. That I just wasn’t cut out for owning my own art business and relying on it completely for income. We went back to guiding and I completely stopped making art and jewelry altogether – I didn’t touch any of my supplies for almost a year. But then something happened that shifted everything. The pandemic hit in the spring of 2020 and I lost my employment. I felt completely helpless knowing there were so many people suffering. I turned to the one constant in my life that has always been there when all else falls away: I started making art again. The intention behind making art went from: “I have to do this to buy dinner tonight” to: “I have to do this to raise money for non-profits that need our help…” and “I have to do this to remind my friends and family that there is joy and beauty and connection to hold on to.” It changed everything for me.
Making art went from this ego-struggle I was having with myself to a necessity of spirit. It started with internal dialogues of “is this good enough? Do people want to buy this? I have no idea what I’m doing and my art isn’t worth sharing.” It was all about me. That’s why I hated it…it felt selfish and wasn’t being made from the right place in my heart. My motives shifted from making art for me and my personal gain to making art for others…making art to connect us…and raising money for non-profits and causes that benefit the cultures and landscapes of the southwest. Living in this red rock desert…it’s just impossible not to create when I really let go of my own ego and get out of my own way. I would not be where I am today without the support of my incredible partner, family, friends, and even people I’ve never met who’ve supported my creative journey since the beginning. Sometimes it takes others believing in us before we can believe in ourselves. Our glimmerings in the dark.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
If you’ve ever been to the desert, then you’re familiar with the harsh beauty of this landscape. The deafening silence…where the only sound you hear is your own thoughts. The feeling of bare feet on warm sandstone as that burning ball of fire finally dips below the horizon. You watch as the canyon transforms from washed-out beige to deep hues of ochre, deep red, and violet. The smell of sagebrush and juniper from a recent downpour wakes you up, just like the moonflower that is finally opening its’ fragrant, white bloom at dusk. It is in these moments and these sensations that we fall in love with the desert…and ourselves. Its vastness humbles us…we look out over the horizon to see miles and miles of canyons carved by rivers and we end up seeing ourselves and our place in the world.
This is why I create. It is my goal to not only capture these sensations, or create something that allows us to connect to that feeling…but also to protect these places. I create desert-inspired handmade jewelry and prints. I primarily create beaded earrings – each design attempting to capture the hues of the desert or even actual desert landscapes or plants/animals. I also create hand-hammered and shaped wire hoop earrings that I adorn with real, ethically-collected western diamondback rattlesnake vertebrae. Snakes are symbols of change, and my hope for incorporating their vertebrae in a lot of my work is to remind us all of our power to shed what no longer serves us.
Most of my prints and postcards are created by collaging repurposed magazines. I hand-cut and paste pieces of old magazines featuring desert landscapes and wildflowers, then scan the collage and draw over it digitally. My collages combine different desert ecosystems and wildflowers to serve as a reminder of the feelings of place. I also will create prints using my own original digital photography and digital drawing. What I am most proud of and what continues to inspire me to create is the commitment I have made to myself to use art as activism. A portion of every purchase is donated quarterly to a rotation of regional non-profits that support environmental conservation, education, and advocacy. Every purchase helps protect the land, water, and cultures of the desert southwest.
Is there any advice you’d like to share with our readers who might just be starting out?
If starting your own business is something that you’ve been debating doing…and it is something you know would be risky but would bring you joy…then I need you to just read this quote and let it sink in.
“And then there is the most dangerous risk of all — the risk of spending your life not doing what you want on the bet you can buy yourself the freedom to do it later.” (Randy Komisar).
Nothing is guaranteed in this life. Our time is all we have and if we have the great privilege of choosing what we can do with it…then choose well. It might not be the most lucrative…or most socially-acceptable thing. It might be terrifying and you might have to sacrifice a lot and be willing to fail over and over. But it also might be the most fulfilling thing you’ve ever done. It might just be the way you can personally make a small difference in your own community, or inspire someone else to chase their dreams. It might teach you more about yourself than you’ve ever known – and show you you’re much more capable of hard things than you’ve ever proven to yourself before. And to become a better version of ourselves and give back to our community…I mean…that’s all we really can hope to do in this wildlife.
Contact Info:
- Website: coyotecrafted.com
- Instagram: @coyotecrafted
- Facebook: @coyotecraftedmoab
