To Jessica Pierose, life is a ride full of great turns and surprises. Jessica is an artist with an electric feel of aliveness, she meets life directly in the moment. We began in her studio in Santa Monica, one foggy fall morning. I had heard a story indirectly about a skirmish with Rolls-Royce early in her career and wanted to hear the account firsthand.
The tale unfolds; a friend who collects Rolls Royce’s asked Jessica to draw the car’s grill. With typical intrepid directness, she marched into the Rolls-Royce dealership in Beverly Hills and asked to do research. The helpful receptionist pulled a piece and showed it to her. A little later, as she was close to finishing the drawing, a manager came by and inquired as to what she was doing. After finding out, he told her to leave, informing Jessica that the logo was trademarked and that copying it would grounds for a lawsuit. Yet Jessica persisted, asking to be allowed to draw it. Finally the manager relented, and she was put in contact with the main office. They asked her to prepare a prototype of her art work for consideration.
Jessica has hutzpah. Eventually she won the executives at Rolls-Royce Ltd. headquarters over and received full permission to etch the car’s logo, informally known as the ‘Flying Lady,’ the car’s official logo. Not only was it extraordinary that she was given the right to use the Flying Lady, she was commissioned to make 300 ‘coffrets’ or fancy boxes made of crystal for clients of the luxury car maker. The boxes were all etched with the logo, formally known as ‘Spirit of Ecstasy.’ This was only the beginning of a lucrative career working with glass.
From etching the crystal boxes for the car, Jessica spent nearly five years with the Rolls-Royce company giving her ‘license’ to do as she pleased with the Spirit of Ecstasy in designing their trophies. Jessica made their trophy with etched glass for the championship polo matches sponsored by United States Polo Association (USPA), and for the National Circuit Championship Series of the Swan Yacht races. The Swan Yachts, I was informed, are premium yachts; mansions constructed of the finest wood and gold, that can power at high speed over the water. To quote Jessica regarding all these commissions, ‘One thing leads to another.’
They do indeed. One day she received a call from someone indicating that he’d heard that she did ‘out of the ordinary things.’ The client was interested in finding a way to set gold within double sheets of glass in his private jet. Later in the conversation, he indicated that he was a representative for the ‘richest man in the world.’ Unimpressed, Jessica’s attitude was, ‘Yeah, what are the dimensions that I need to put together some prototypes?’ She negotiated $1200 to do samples to figure out whether or not she could embed gold within two sheets of glass without cracking the gold or the glass, or burning the sizing.
She got off the phone and turned to several friends. ‘I just got a call from someone saying this ‘Saul Birney’ guy is the richest man in the world, ever heard of him?’ They stared at her, ‘You must mean the Sultan of Brunei, who is the richest man in the world.’ She paused, but only for a few minutes to take it in. Then she set out to solve the puzzle of embedding gold within double sheets of glass to be placed in the shower of the Sultan’s private jet and for his second jet that he uses as a stable, to cart around his team’s polo players and the polo horses.
She had worked with luxury craft on land and water, now she began her work of bringing art glass to the air, starting with the Sultan’s palace in the sky. A short time later, a well-known French aircraft company, Dassault Falcon Jet called; ‘I understand you do extraordinary things.’ Things ‘took off’ after that.
Jessica has done glass work for overseas clients, but in the United States, aircraft must use lexan as a substitute. She has made a specialty of designing etched decorative bulkheads for well-heeled aircraft owners. Not only is there a demanding quality to the requirements of making etched work for aircraft, because the industry is tightly regulated by the Federal Aviation Authority (FAA), there is a considerable amount of paperwork to be certified. Jessica credits a female executive, heading up purchasing with a highly regarded aircraft manufacturer, with teaching her how to handle the business of working with aircraft companies. A really strong woman and good friend, Jessica offered, “she ‘beat into me like a nun’ how to invoice aircraft companies and handle all the certification requirements.”
Jessica acknowledges that her business success has hinged not only on being able to handle this complex web of paperwork, but to balance these demands with the artistic skill of meeting exacting requirements within strict deadlines. She has been applying her creativity with the aircraft industry for ten years now, and is certified by Gulfstream, Bombadier, Decrane Air, and Dassault Falcon Jet. At this point she definitely knows her way around.
Waxing more philosophically, Jessica replied that she knows not to make too many plans. In her career she has seen how doors open and she is given entree to the next avenue of expression. She works hard and practices faith in knowing that she will continue to work. For her, she usually senses that something is coming that feels ‘grand.’ She keenly recognizes that when she is bogged down and stressed, its hard to stay clear, and that the sensing of something expansively great does not happen when she is under duress. So she has been learning to be dedicated, clear and direct with life.
In some ways Jessica’s life seems to have been charmed. As a child she received positive affirmation from family, friends and teachers. At family gatherings she was regularly invited to express herself creatively, and was acknowledged for her offerings. Jessica has been drawing since she was nine and won awards for watercolor painting in school. She grew up believing that she was creative and as she moved into adult life, she acted upon her interest. From her experience she has come to know, “If you believe you can, you can. You have to be persistent in life.”
In her early twenties she was introduced to stained glass when she was commissioned by an established glass artist to draw 100 fish and 100 birds for one dollar each. When her father died, an inheritance allowed for time and space to explore her creativity without financial pressure, becoming part of a Malibu art community as she learned stained glass, etching, and then crystal carving.
Even as an established artist, she readily admits there are cycles of feast and famine. Jessica refers to the ‘seasons’ of being a glass artist, acknowledging that even with all the flow in business, there have been times when there was hardship, even while working with a foundation of wealthy clients.
This is Jessica’s real passion, doing custom commissions, ‘with clients really willing to pay for art.’ For her, this is when she is most deeply engaged in the creative process. When she is doing a commission, “I draw until I feel the piece comes alive. Then when I carve, I can feel the work, there is spirit in it.”
Like many successful artist businesses, she has struggled between the decision to stay small and keep her work personalized and of high quality, or build a corporation with a solid reputation capable of producing a higher volume of work, but with a vast difference in focus. So far, she has chosen to remain small, to hire assistance where needed and keep her focus on the art in her business.
Summing it all up, Jessica offered; “I have a lot of faith. I know I’m a blessed person. I have gifts and I’m able to live from using them. I know something will always come around.” Jessica Pierose lives as artistic testimony to the power of believing in the creative spirit and acting on it, whether through holding faith or solving puzzles embedding gold securely and beautifully in glass.
Here and Hereafter
The trailers looking appealing, so last night I saw Clint Eastwood’s new film, ‘Hereafter.’ I had read that it was a thinking person’s film. I left with the thought, ‘What was he thinking?’ Still, it did spark this post.
The writing and vision presented through words lacked coherence and I didn’t feel that resonant with the black and white visuals that were offered to give a sense of what is ‘beyond’ our everyday domain. The film does have well-crafted opening drama. The female lead, played by Cecile de France, is vacationing on an idyllic South Pacific island when a tsunami rips over the land engulfing everything in its wake. She nearly dies, but somehow returns from near drowning. Returning to daily life, she isn’t all there. She is rightly dazed and instead of being engaged in a busy swirl of success, she stares off wistfully, showing clear signs of having been awash in the after effects of an event that had effectively capsized her existing world view.
Even though I found the film lacking, the visual story line of aspects of this film provided an impulse to recall my own near death experience as a twenty something. The summer of the near death or more appropriately, life review experience that I had brought many moments to gaze into the distance. While at that time, I had no background to give me any context for what had happened, I knew that something profound had occurred while I was unconscious and the course of my life in this realm was now altered in some way that I was sensing how to fathom. When I finally shared with my mother Vella, who I was very close to, that I knew I’d had some kind of crossing the border experience, she admitted that she’d been told when I was just a little girl that I would die around this time. It was a great confirmation for what I was sensing, this was a pivotal turning point somehow.
This month is the fifth anniversary of another major turning point, my mother’s move to the hereafter, marking her metamorphosis from earthly form. Astonishingly, this year, I totally forgot the day–there were no tears of loss or abandonment, and instead, I was in a high flow state.
Death is so synonymous with ‘loss’ and heartbreak is such a major part of my life experience. Indeed, it is one of the most used words to describe my emotional pain body’s constellation of issues. The year following her death was one of the darkest times I’ve known. In the past years, all it took was a simple thought of her passage to bring tears welling up. This year though, was quite different.
I was engaged in enjoying being myself with a dear femme friend, Lanae. I felt light and fluid and free during our afternoon nosh, and then visiting a healing center where the Swilling family is deeply engaged in bringing the devotion of their minds and hearts to helping people find more options for healing and harmonizing in their lives at their Know Your Options healing center. The afternoon of this anniversary date was full of heart and enjoyment, and a sense of blessedness and heart resonant companionship. It was a clear indication of the continuity of love, and for me, this was a living legacy of what Vella and I knew in this realm now being extended into my life in the here and now.
Shortly before I was reminded of the history of the day, as I was walking up the stairs to come home, I remembered Vella in a wave of gratitude and sent up a message to say thanks again to her in spirit. Something was registering on my antennae. As I sat down to check my e-mails as part of the daily return home, I had a quizzical moment gazing at the header simply named ‘Vella’ on a note from my love Rick, who was away traveling. I opened the message and was slightly stunned to realize that the pain of her passage had not registered on my inner screen. AT ALL. It felt odd, and I was first amazed, then amused to realize that this day of all the days could have included such wondrous unfolding enjoyment of life unmarked by my usual wash of emotional waves of pain during marker points such as this.
Through many long years of life full of emotional turbulence, Vella used to send me messages with these words, “Under the shadow of my wings, until the pain is over and gone.” I figured these lines came from somewhere in the Bible, and although most of traditional Christian religion is not resonant with me, these words struck a chord. I felt the sense of how the divine can provide continuity beyond the turbulence of the temporal world. I have walked close with the wisdom in this message, at times clinging to a sense of this possibility, even as life events catapulted and capsized my sense of inner equilibrium again and again. Without knowing it, this year I finally realized the truth of the words of wisdom, for I experienced what it was like for the pain of her passage to have washed out of me. There may be other times when I feel the poignancy of not having her human self to exchange with, but for now, I have found a place that knows what it is like to be at ease–beyond the cavernous sense of loss and pain that was a deep wound for a length of time after her departure from this plane of existence.
Vella used to tell me, ‘This too will pass.’ When she first said it while I was a teenager, I looked at her in complete wonder that this could even be a possibility as I was in the throes of my first teenage heartbreak. I trusted this woman, she knew a few things and I remember the blip it made on the screen of my consciousness that even a remote possibility existed that someday I would not feel such a pouring out of my heart center, as a draining sense of loss.
Now, many decades later, she has proven what wise words were spoken as I have found a place of abundance in the heart, where spirit has funneled a great wave of fullness to sustain my life, to amuse and inspire and bring an enjoyable awe to my consciousness of how there is continuity that weaves itself from hereafter into the here and now. I could feel Vella smiling with me when I realized how far my human understanding of the process of metamorphosis has come.
While I have had a conceptual understanding and belief in this possibility, this year I experienced the gift of emotional unity. It came from having allowed the dark storm of feelings after she left in 2005 to move and shift through the years as I kept being with the pain of ‘loss’ and feelings of abandonment in missing her. I have moved forward with the waves of E~nergy~in~Motion that have exerted their own evolutionary processes to bring more spiritual integration into my life. This energy is supposed to move, and the art of it is to allow it to arise and learn to work with it constructively, just as an artist dives into the depths and takes elements that are raw and potent from the unconscious and shapes them into something that informs through creative action. We don’t have to have it figured out or control the ride, yet it is important to learn how to be strong and become more adept in riding the waves of energy in motion that come.
Returning to my initial launch point for this piece on the subject of hereafter and the film by this name, I’d acknowledge that the black and white amorphous shapes pictured in the film are suited to a phase of loss that is stark and despairing. However, for me it was too confining in its perspective that stays within the status quo of what it is like in the human realm to feel the underworld disorientation of loss. I’m glad that when my world went dark and was full of festering feelings, I didn’t try to pretend or push the waves of emotion under. As in any composting process, eventually what is dark and rank and smelly metamorphoses into the elements of fertile life.
For now I can breathe and smile. The years spent working to carry the gift of love and honor the beauty we shared has born fruit. This anniversary of Vella’s leave-taking, the process has come full circle. It’s a spiritual paradox that I’m appreciating; how the alchemy of love is able to work its magic to transform the energy of pain into more of its own ‘kind.’ I am enjoying that this pivotal and painful turning point in my human life has now been transformed to a much higher plane of awareness. The proof? My life has sprouted a surprise crop of heart’s abundance as satisfying as anything I’ve ever known.