Meet Adelia Spivey: Artist & Animal Rescuer

We had the good fortune of connecting with Adelia Spivey and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Adelia, why did you pursue a creative career?
From my earliest memories as a child, I had a craving to make art and save animals. I was anxious to advance to adulthood because I had a vision that as an adult, I would be free to make all the art I wanted and save all the animals. I was somehow born knowing this would be my path and that no other would quite fit me. Now in my 40’s, that childhood dream hasn’t changed much with the exception that I have a deeper understanding of just how many art sales it truly takes to save all those animals, and I have modified goals about how to best use my talents to make the kind of impact I’d like to have on the world. In college, I fell in love with jewelry making and chose it as my artistic offering. My designs have changed a lot over the years, but I have been making and selling jewelry ever since I completed my graduate degree. I sell my work through shops & galleries, online, and at select art events, and I use an ongoing portion of my sales to help animals. I don’t want to give away all the details of my future plan, but let’s just say it looks like more art going out into the world and more animals being saved on a greater scale than before…

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
Making a living as an artist for a little over two decades hasn’t always been easy but it has been worth it. I think the majority of our most satisfying achievements in life probably fall into that category. My greatest challenge has been remaining malleable. What worked in the beginning doesn’t necessarily work today, and as the physical me has changed a bit too, I’ve had to remain open and flexible around honoring those transitions as well. The outpouring of creativity required to live this life is like a river that cannot and will not ever be stopped. What sets me apart from others is that I continually strive to offer art that is new and different from what people may have seen before. I mix my photography with my jewelry. So where one might expect to see a gemstone in a design, I’ve often used my photographs, particularly photos of gorgeous sunrises and the ocean, covered in a glass cabochon. I love witnessing the delight in a customer’s eyes when they make the connection that what they are looking at is much more than another ordinary colorful piece of glass or stone. What I am most proud of is my memorial jewelry line. I create custom pieces of jewelry for people using the cremains of lost loved ones and pets. It is so hard to lose a loved one or an animal, and no matter how pretty the container, a box or an urn of ashes still feels incredibly sad to me. It gives me great satisfaction to take something so sad and transform it into a tangible, beautiful creation worn close to the heart, holding a rather celebratory energy of the life passed. In my own small way, it makes me feel like I’m helping a little bit.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
One of the things I love most about Atlanta is all the great galleries! I’d take my friend to as many galleries as we could fit into the trip with the High Museum of Art and Oglethorpe University Museum of Art being firsts on the list. Another thing I love about Atlanta is all the great food options. We’d definitely go out to eat at Lov’n It Live & Tassili’s Raw Reality Cafe, and we’d get take out from Viva la Vegan. Of course, we all need our exercise, dogs included, so we’d have to make some stops at Northside Trail and Piedmont Dog Park. Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
I wouldn’t be where I am today if it wasn’t for my family. I have my dad especially to thank. He always told me I could be anything I wanted to be and achieve any goal if I just set my mind to it, and he was a good example of that himself. He didn’t understand my desire to be an artist because he said in his time, people didn’t pursue art as a serious career. Nonetheless, he backed me with his support and had complete faith in me and my dream. I am so lucky to have had such a dad on my side! In more recent years, I can’t give enough praise to Paws-Ability and Adopt an Angel. Before I got involved with these two awesome, local animal rescue groups, the animals would always find me and I would do everything I could to help them but what I had unfortunately wasn’t always enough to meet every need presented. With the help of these two amazing organizations, I’ve been able to help so many more animals than I was ever able to help on my own, and it’s been so wonderful to be able to do so.

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