Tell us about yourself.
My name is Jessica Tenbusch and I'm currently living in Ypsilanti. I'm at Eastern Michigan University earning a second bachelors in fine arts. Not sure when I got the crazy idea in my head to keep going to school after I already graduated, but here I am!

What are your favorite materials and what types of things do you create with them?
When it comes to jewelry, I love to use oxidized sterling silver, yummy gemstones and vintage beads. I generally focus on color more than form or texture. I also love brass stampings and vintage brass chains.

As for other crafty-ness, I'm having a love affair with yarn! I love the colors and textures, yarn is very sensual, as in gratifying to the senses. I'm taking two textiles classes in the spring. So, who knows, maybe I'll abandon jewelry for yarn.

What first made you want to become an artist/crafter?
I've got some crafty roots; my mother is a bit of a jack-of-all-trades. She refinishes and builds furniture, she was a seamstress for a while, her and and my grandmother had a company making clocks and she also works in heating and cooling and knows her way around electronics to list a few of my mother's skills. To sum it up, she rocks. :) So I spent a lot of time as a kid at crafting stores like Michaels and Franks and learning how to make stuff. My favorite were the Lisa Frank jewelry kits. I could spend hours making bracelets and necklaces from all that gaudy neon-colored plastic.

But, I didn't actually decide to be an artist until recently. I was originally against the idea thinking that going to art school or trying to pursue it as a career would force me to be creative and then it wouldn't be fun anymore. Sometime last year though, I decided to give it a shot. I began to sell jewelry on Etsy and started my degree last fall. I am very happy I did!

Where does the inspiration for your work come from?
My inspiration comes from observations of the natural world and from science. I love to think of say continental shelves or sine waves, and then design a piece around that concept. All the names of my pieces come from science as well. I like to name a piece something obscure like thermohaline in the hopes that someone would find it intriguing and maybe look up the term and educate themselves about it.

I also keep a scrapbook of sorts where I keep images of different designs from jewelry to wallpaper and browse through them whenever I'm feeling a little stumped.

How do you promote your work?
Promotion, now that is something I should spend more time on! Right now, I use Flickr and MySpace and have some business cards. Nothing fancy. I have an idea for a blog but I'm afraid my treehugger and socially conscientious ways will have me on a soap box more than promoting my work, lol.

Where can your work be found?
I sell my work on Etsy only (equilibria.etsy.com) but I hope to move to some local brick and mortar stores soon.

My work can be viewed on Flickr (http://www. flickr. com/photos/equilibria/) and promotions, news, events and the like can be viewed here on MySpace (http://www. myspace. com/equilibria_design).


What do you like best about the DIY scene?
I love the sense of community! It's so much like the days of buying from the mom & pop stores, you can build a relationship with the people you buy from and learn about them as a person, not just a business. And, due to social conscientiousness stated above, I find DIY an environmentally and artisan friendly response the capitalist and overly-consumer culture the Western world has created. Plus there is nothing more satisfying that saying "I made this!"

In 5 years what would you like to be doing?
I would love to graduate for good! But I would also love to build a successful business and finally find my niche. So far I've dabbled in quite a bit artistically but I have yet to find the medium that truly resonates with me.