Shawan, 19
So the work that I’m doing today is professional wire art crafts. And what inspired me to do this with a little bit of using the minerals and gemstones is just a way to take beautiful jewelry that teaches people to respect and love earth for the beauty of earth and just amazing complexity.
I’m currently 19 years old, as from the time I was birthed out of my mama.
My occupation is, my occupation is resurgence, and resurgence of life, and healthy living and good stuff. So no matter what it is you catch me doing in the moment, it’s to emanate a resurgence of happy life, good life, peaceful life, and sustainable life. So my occupation is to emanate that.
So I decided to use precious gemstones and minerals to create jewelries so then that I could promote awareness of the beauty of earth, but also this also ties into mental health awareness and stuff like that.
So I do, and I also do this art on the street because it’s really an unfair world. No one can afford the rent, you know, you have to work your ass off. We’re not accommodated on a natural level, you know, we’re not guided through life. We’re told, here you go, this is what you get, now what can you do with it? But the only way to truly produce is if we’re actually guided with all the things we need. So to me it’s a form of protest.
When I go to school I want to not feel like I’m in the school by myself amongst hundreds of people. I want to feel like I’m amongst hundreds of people and like the guidance counselor is guiding me towards where I’m supposed to be because that’s what guidance is. I want to feel like, you know, a police is making the streets safe, but when the streets aren’t safe then why do we have police? It’s just like, I want everything to live up to what it’s supposed to be because it’s always going to be there.
What is the process of making your art?
One of my pieces. A lot of it’s prayer, honestly. Sometimes when I’m making the pieces I don’t even know how I make them, you know, it just it’s like it’s wrapping itself. I don’t even know what I’m about to do, but then it just comes out and I’m like, okay, Nifty, that worked out well. It’s a hard thing to do. It takes a few hours to make one, but surely it comes out and it looks absolutely phenomenal. I get all types of like positive feedback, people that travel around the world that have my pieces. People are like running up to them and grabbing them like, where’d you get this from? Where’d you get this from?
So the whole process is just to make sure it becomes what it’s supposed to become, and from there you gotta just do some honest prayer. And it’s like, to me, I feel like prayer has lost in essence, and so like actual serious prayer. We’re in hard times, that’s when you can pray the best, when you’re in hard times you need to pray the most.
So it’s like, it’s a strong sense for when I pray, I pray very hard and tough. It’s a resilient prayer, you know, because these are times that need resilience, so I come in with all the awareness that I can have and then asking to be guided by all the awareness that is good — which I don’t have — to pass through me to and then to allow me to just get some wires, get some beautiful gems and make something that’ll help someone in life, make them happy.
Kensington. Market.
Heart.
Space.
We have the mind, and the heart — and I notice that with this society, everyone seems to be more — the mind is very controlled, by the mind. The thinking process is very controlled by the mind: I need to get here and get there. But when we open the heart, you see something, you go towards that thing, and you figure out what’s going on there.
I know a lot of people come to where I am right now, Kensington. It’s a little bit of it, or most of it, is the heart — they come here because, oh there’s people here, community, there’s nice things to buy, sure. But, you know, you want to have the full experience of the place — maybe make a friend, find a lover, or enter into a musical: people are playing guitars, people are rapping, people are dancing, or something like that, you know. I know that people need to remember what their heart wants, and then they’re usually not gonna see it. So then, from there, you have to fight to create that space.
I’ve heard stories about this place, maybe six years ago or a long time ago too even. This place you have way more people doing that, but now it’s on a down low. There’s not that many people here coming to create that heart space — the space that their heart wants — like playing the guitar, having like a big speaker playing music, everyone’s having fun. All that stuff, just like, you know: young, wild and free, like Snoop Dogg and Wiz Khalifa said.
What message do you have for youth to be inspired and to get into the passion of making art?
My message to the youth is to, I know everyone’s gonna tell you to follow your mind, but when you decide to start following your heart, you’re not gonna listen to that stuff anymore. You’re gonna listen to whatever your heart says and anyone that speaks in the same language as the heart.
So you have to, you know — what do you really want? It’s inside of you. iI’s a very quiet voice, but there’s something inside of you saying: go out here and make friends. You see a group of people, go up to them and talk to them.
That sort of thing is the natural human essence that we should not despise, or lose.
A PORTRAIT OF LIFE 
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