Daily Inspiration: Meet Aleyshia Czarnecki

Today we’d like to introduce you to Aleyshia Czarnecki

Hi Aleyshia, 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?
As much as I joke about getting to this point in running a small business was an accident – sometimes it feels like it was always meant to be. I grew up with a deep appreciation for art and history. Not only do I come from a family of artists, my uncle used to read me art history books while I was a baby. My grandma who helped raise me (and who I owe a lot of my craft skills to) distilled in me to always learn and remember history as much as possible, that knowing where we come from will teach us where to go. I went to GVSU and got a degree in Art History with a minor in studio art and quickly realized that it was difficult to find home decor that honored the art that I enjoyed studying the most. There are plenty of coffee mugs with art from impressionist masters, but anything else was kind of secluded to mass-printed, ill made posters that eventually just get ripped up and fall down. I took it upon myself to decorate my own home in what I studied most in school, late medieval and early renaissance art, but frankly I ran out of space. Because I fell in love with the process of making the art, I didn’t want to stop there, and so my business Twin Goats was born! It became an opportunity to share my knowledge and passion for this art with others, and if I can be bold, hopefully preserve the history of the pieces I use in a way everyone can enjoy.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
I wouldn’t say it’s necessarily been smooth, but I’ve never seen the bumps along the way as a bad thing. Twin Goats definitely has done better from the start than I imagined, but expecting everything that goes into a small business to go smoothly would be a little crazy. However, I’ve said from the start I don’t want Twin Goats to just be a money making opportunity for me. The intended purpose of Twin Goats has always been sharing art that I love with other people, and that decision making affects how I price things, what markets I attend, and essentially just how I go about running the business. Not every market is a success, sometimes you just don’t understand how marketing works, and juggling personal life, small business, and your ‘real-life’ job can feel like you’re stretched too thin all the time. I found very quickly that the little wins mean everything to me. If I sit at a market for 7 hours and only sell one thing to someone who was genuinely excited about my art and hearing the history about the piece, it is very easy for me to call that day a success (true story). I think about the statement “why am I doing this” a lot, and how it can always be read differently depending on if you’re feeling down about how things are going or if you’re feeling determined to keep improving and growing.

Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
I use historical art to make modern home decor. That means I take primarily 15th and 16th century art, a lot of which isn’t even on display in museums, and put it onto something that you can put in your home. This definitely tends to set Twin Goats apart, you don’t typically see historical late medieval pieces at art markets aside from places like Renaissance Festivals. Since I focused most of my research in school on these periods, each piece is something I know the history of, and I like to include some of that with my decor. I’m most proud of something I just finished, a recreation of a 15th century Florentine Tarot deck. Each block I hand carved and pressed onto paper just as it would have been when it was originally created. It was a test of my patience, and took me almost a year, but I’m proud of myself for sticking to my commitment to historical accuracy. It’s also my first piece that is multi-functional. The art on each card is beautiful, and while it can absolutely be used as a modern tarot deck, I take the opportunity to show it can simultaneously be used for the exact same purpose that it was created for – to play card games. I think it’s fun to play with that duality, and how the things we interact with can change in function and meaning over time. I feel very lucky that I have found an audience, and that there are people out there that appreciate what I’m doing enough to support it financially.

Any advice for finding a mentor or networking in general?
Be a part of your community! I can definitely say that everyone doing what you’re doing is feeling all the same feelings you are, and it’s easier together. Meeting the people alongside me on this path has not only opened opportunities professionally, but also allowed me to make a lot of friends. Everyone does everything they can to help each other, and it is an encouraging environment. Being a part of my local artist community I learned quickly that people don’t see each other as competition, but more as friends who just want to see each other succeed in every way possible. We are all in this together and have to help each other out. We celebrate each other’s wins and we lend a hand, supplies, or even just an ear when things aren’t easy. If we want a community to be successful we have to treat each other and act as a community – and I think Grand Rapids really has a good hold on that as far as artists go.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://twingoatsmercantile.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/twin.goats/