Serra Victoria Bothwell Fels has the curiosity of 10 different people

Name: Serra Victoria Bothwell Fels

Age: 28

Hometown: Knoxville, TN

Job description: Metalsmith, designer, founder of the Apothecary Ladies, a Victorian parlor-style collective that helps people talk about important issues in their lives.

Bio: Prop designer for The Sweet Cheat (directed by Jeff Stark), a post-apocalyptic play set in an derelict warehouse and based on Rick Moody’s short story, The Albertine Notes; worked with craft collectives that helped women increase their incomes, in Brazil; taught environmental education at an urban organic farm in Melbourne; studied blacksmithing and silversmithing at the Appalachian Center for Craft; majored in social psychology and peace and conflict resolutions at Stanford University 

Upcoming projects: Writing and illustrating a children’s book (“It’s about a boy who lives inside of his imagination. He keeps getting in trouble at school. Because he’s inside of his imagination and truant in class. And it’s about how he learns to bring the objects from his imagination into the real world.”)

; introducing Will Be Victorious, a line of “Victoriana-style” jewelry with a “slight, militaristic and seaman bent”, and bike accouterments like metal patch kits, that fit under bicycle seats, and messenger bags (“I love messenger bags. They’re amazing and huge. They’re so fucking ugly. I want to make something gorgeous that I want to use, and hopefully other people will, too.”) 

Select links: "Racing mousetrap cars at the Whitney Biennial" (Making Things Move), The Sweet Cheat: Re-experiencing Memories in a Post-Apocalyptic New York" (3rd Ward Magazine), "Help A Libra Out" (Frankie Shot Me) 

Describe your current state of mind. 

Gear-shifting. It’s very much a different frame of mind to be traveling for many months. Then the coming home process, especially coming back to New York, it’s a different mode of how to interact, and how to get things done in your day. 

Where did you travel to? 

I was in Nevada. I bought my friend’s truck in California, and drove across the country through Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Louisiana and came on up that way, visiting friends from the South. 

Did you travel alone or with someone? 

It varied, mostly by myself. 

What’s it like traveling alone? 

I love it. It’s my favorite way to travel. You’ve got an ability to say, Yes, when you want to say, Yes, to make spontaneous decisions because you’re beholden to only one person, versus a group of people. 

It makes it much easier to be curious and to discover new things. I’ve got friends across the country, so it’s really nice to be able to go and see them all in their home locations. 

How do you stay safe when you’re traveling? 

Just stay smart, you know? When I was living in Brazil, I met an American woman who continually had bad things happen to her. 

Like what? 

Her backpack had been stolen with everything in it.  I met her days after. We went to a party in Downtown Salvador. Her purse was snatched off of her and taken into the crowd. She was really frustrated and went home.

At the time, I remember thinking she was making bad decisions; she was expecting the environment to live up to her expectations, rather than changing her expectations to the environment that she was in. And she just shouldn’t have been wearing a purse. Put cash in your boot. You just make smarter choices. 

How did you learn about metalsmithing? 

By accident, I ended up in a silversmithing class in undergrad, and fell in love with it.

My family’s really academic. I was never really pressured into it, but I was always assumed into academia, and pursuing nerdy-ness to the full degree.

But I get my energy in life through making things with my hands. [I] didn’t realize I could activate my brain that way. I learned what it was to be smart in different ways. It was an amazing experience to be able to think theoretically and mechanically, all at the same time. 

From there, I just started welding with friends. I lived in Australia for a while and decided that I really wanted to pursue it. I moved to Smithville, TN [to study] blacksmithing and silversmithing for a year at Appalachian Center for Craft, which is an amazing program.

I’m really fascinated by process. Instructables.com is my porn of choice. How do you make things? It’s an incredible question that human history is based on. 

Tell me about some of the properties of metal. 

What I love about metal is that you’re asking something obstinate to do what you want. And that’s a really alchemistic process; it’s really magical.

Different metals require different tools.

I find silversmithing [to be] a very delicate process, very detail-oriented. It let’s my slightly OCD brain do what it likes to do, which is get into something and think about nitty-gritty details. And it’s a kind of meditation.

Whereas, blacksmithing and forging is very much about the heft of the metal and your hammer, and how it heats up.

What are some of the things that you’ve made out of metal? 

I have a series of jewelry that’s body parts, which I find hilarious. [laughs] 

What kind of body parts? 

I attempt to do it in a very elegant way. I have a belt buckle cast and bronze, that’s my hand from my knuckles to my fingertips. And then I’ve got another belt that has a slight hint of an ammo belt that’s all casts of my eyes. We used that for one of the characters in The Sweet Cheat.

Necklaces of cast pinky fingers. What else? I’ve got another necklace that is fingerprints cascading down a collarbone. I think the collarbone is one of the sexiest parts of the body; it’s incredibly intimate. You have to know someone really well to be able to touch their collarbone. Unlike sex, which we seem to do with random people, as our young generation does quite frequently.

How conscious are you of gender, as a metalsmith? 

Definitely not in jewelry. Not so much, no. I think the only way I’m conscious of it is not so much about gender, but about my own personal strength. I’m not able to move a piece of metal as someone, who’s bigger than, I am. That tends to fall along gender lines, though it’s not always true. 

Belt buckle (cast bronze) / Photos courtesy of Serra Victoria Bothwell Fels

What are some misconceptions about metalsmiths? 

That we make horseshoes, which is called ferrying.

 So for the record you don’t make horseshoes. You did some work with craft collectives in Brazil. Tell me about the significance of that experience and how crafting can help people. 

I was looking at the extent to which craft collectives can help improve women’s incomes, versus acting as a sole commercial interest. They have a fabulous ability to help incredibly poor people get paid for what their traditions have taught them to do, which is amazing. And it doesn’t always hold up the same, versus capitalistic ventures. 

In what way? 

The area I was studying in was Salvador, in Brazil. In general, people who were most successful in the craft market there were men and one woman, who started out on their own and reaped all the benefits of their process. Whereas, a collective divides up all the costs. So it’s spread throughout a larger group of people which, in the end, elevates everybody. To higher them from where they were, but not in the same amount as if you were one woman on your own, if you had the right connections. 

So it’s a more socialist model. 

Yeah. 

Tell me about the objects you work with. 

Most of my work, I make out of scavenged materials, with the exception of metal, which you have to buy, for better or for worse.

I completely eschew plastic.

I want to see the rise of heirloom objects again. Which are objects that you buy as an investment for your family, that you’re planning to pass down. I think that tradition of investing in your objects in that way is really beautiful and important.

The reason we have a floating trash island in the ocean right now [is] because it’s cheaper to buy something new than it is to fix it; that’s completely fucked up. We’re not making good choices when it comes to objects, as a first world country. 

Where do you scavenge your materials? 

A million and one places. I travel a lot. I’m addicted to flea markets.

But I like that. It’s about taking over things that aren’t wanted by anybody and turning them into things that are wanted by somebody.

What are your goals as a smith and designer? 

I make jewelry and I smith. But it’s one of a number of processes that I really enjoy. I like creating environments for ritual, where people can talk to one another about real things in their lives, without it being overwhelming.

I listened to this fabulous This American Life program this writer, who flew around the world writing, and had severe issues with depression when he was in Africa He tried every therapy, every drug. He was doing some project on a local tribe there and one of his contacts was like, “Oh, that’s not depression. That’s a demon inside of you. We’ve got a shaman who can get rid of that.” The guy at that point was like, “Well, I tried everything. Why not?”

He made contacts with the shaman and they had to buy a goat. The goat was slaughtered and there was this whole process that happened, that was very much of the culture that he was in. Part of the ritual was that the entire small town came out and witnessed his process. He said that what he got out of that process was feeling connected to other humans. And it really hit home.

Depression is something that afflicts a lot of people in really subtle ways. It’s an illness of loneliness and disconnect. I feel like we’re taught to go deal with it with a therapist, behind closed doors. And I don’t always see that as being effective.

So that gave me the idea to start the Apothecary Ladies, a beautiful Victorian parlor, [that began] at the Night Market. And it’s since become a collective with me, my friends Vanessa and Hannah Curtis, who is also performance artist, Volatile Blossom.

So we and this fabulous woman named Danielle and Lauren Larken all got together for the Night Market. Hannah wrote an incredibly funny menu for us.

Our theme was “Spring Cleaning.” And one of the menu items was “Overwhelming, impending doom? We’ll help you get it down to a manageable sense.” And we touted it as, “We’re radically unskilled people just helping out other people.” We had gimmicks, for lack of a better word, that were serious in intent but were also just a venue to talk about things. Vanessa did breathing work; Hannah did tarot readings.

We were simultaneously poking fun at the process while talking to people about really heavy stuff: how they grew up; problems that they were having with their housemates; or dealing with their parent's death.

It wasn’t for an extended period of time, but I felt like we were able to create a space for ritual, where we were able to be there for each other, in a way that community doesn't always function.

What was the reception like?

I didn’t expect it to be as successful as it was. We had to get some of our friends to stand at the door and tell people they couldn’t come in, because we literally couldn’t fit anyone else [into the box truck]. 

Fingerprints on collarbones (bronze cast, copper chain)

What was your childhood like, growing up in Tennessee? 

A good one. We weren't allowed to watch TV when I was a kid, except on weekends. So my brother and I read a lot.

My mom's Australian and my dad is Southern, two different, redneck cultures. My mom grew up in a small town in Queensland, Sugar Cane Land. Her dad was the night manager of a sugar cane store. And neither of her parents graduated from high school. Her mom was a seamstress and she grew up Christian Scientist; they don't believe in doctors. Her dad died of sudden, acute appendicitis, and then her mom died of complications with her kidneys and pneumonia, when I was 5.

We moved to Tennessee when [my mom] was 28 or something like that.

[Her parents] were very much working class, do-it-with-your-hands, and she and her siblings all went to college and finished masters and Ph.D programs. Her dad didn’t ever finish school, but he’s known for driving his car while reading a book.

So it was a family that thought education was really important. My dad was a lawyer when I was growing up but got, slowly, more and more religious, and then became a minister. Even though he’s an Episcopalian minister, he’s still really liberal. He’s one of the most amazing people I know. 

What did you like reading, as a kid? 

Imaginative books that made me think about being in other places. 

What worlds do you remember? 

When I was in third grade, my favorite book was The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles by Julie Andrews Edwards, who wrote this book about these kids [whose] professor found this portal into another world. The last Whangdoodle was dying; he was the king of the entire land. They were trying to figure out how to save him. And I really liked the visuals of it. 

So what brought you to New York? 

I applied to school and gave them half of an application; [I] didn’t submit letters of recommendation or any test scores, because I didn’t think that I could get in.

Then I got in, and it ended up being free. So I didn’t intend to move to New York at all. I intended to move back to the Bay Area, where I lived for a long time. Where my dearest friends live.

But you can’t really turn down a blinking arrow in life. It’s a really bad sign if you’re going to turn down a blinking arrow. You have to go where life is telling you you need to go. So it was an incredible opportunity. 

If you didn’t live in New York, where would you live? 

Can I pick a barge that I built a studio and a garden on, that I can drive around the world?

Definitely. 

I’d like to pick that. And if that happens to come with funding for how to get it from place to place that would be awesome. 

What’s your concept of happiness? 

I don’t think about how to be happy. I think about what gives me energy.  Working with kids gives me energy. They’re amazing creatures, just the way they see the world. It’s so honest and fresh.

Making things. Getting into that meditative head space, where I can just flow, look at a creative problem, and try to solve it.

Sometimes being with a lot of people I love.

Being alone in the woods gives me a lot of energy. 

What skills do you wish you had? 

I wish I could split myself into ten people and pursue ten different careers. I don’t entirely know what they would all be. One of them I would be an engineer. Another one might be a doctor. I find it really fascinating how machines work. I don’t know enough about that.

And I think how the human body works is really fascinating. 

I saw my first autopsy, recently. 

Really, where? 

Through my friend, who’s studying to be a medical examiner. 

Oh my god. That’s amazing.

The body farm in Knoxville [is] this really crazy place. When people donate their bodies to science it comes to the body farm.

They decompose bodies under various amounts of conditions. They’ll submerge it in water to simulate drowning, and then bury it under snow and ice that is thawed three months later. They see how the body decomposes. And that’s how they’re able to do forensic investigations. It’s an incredible place.

If you’re into this sort of thing, there’s this book called Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers. It’s a fabulous book on the history of bodies and what happens to them. [The author] has a number of sections, [including one on] the guillotine. [Another section] is about medical research and how in England, hundreds of years ago, they would pay people for dead bodies. People would be digging bodies up from pauper graves, and they wouldn’t even ask where they came from.

I don’t know what it says about me but I find that totally fascinating.

What qualities do you admire most and least in a person? 

I really dislike it when people have a facade.

I really appreciate people who offer positive sincerity, people with light in their eyes who are excited about the world, and are curious. 

If you could have more of something, what would it be? 

More rusty objects. [laughs] 

How strong are your religious views? 

I’m not a religious person. I’m a spiritual person. My mom grew up Christian Scientist, but is a veterinarian. Clearly, she didn’t absorb that. So I grew up with her as Unitarian Universalist. The idea is that everyone is on their individual, spiritual path, and all we can do is be in it together. It’s all about finding out how you connect to the universe. There are many different pathways to it. 

What about your political views? 

I did a lot of protesting in college when the Afghan War began. I was really angry for a long time because I didn’t understand how people were coming to the conclusions that they were. Why would you start bombing people who hate you? Why wouldn’t you go to the root of the hate, and really talk about it from there?

I did a lot of organizing, non-violent protesting, [and] under-the-radar interference. I got burnt out by it. I spent so much time telling people, trying to express how angry I was. Some choices were being made on my behalf, without my consent, and I felt like I wasn’t changing anything. So I made a decision. Instead of saying what I didn’t like, [I] started making things that I did like. I think it comes out in objects that I make, how I choose to live, who I choose to be friends with, how I build communities, and where I buy my food.

I read the news less. And I really try to concentrate on my city, things that I can help change. 

I think voting is really important. If I could make one law in the United States, I would make a law that would require everyone to vote. I think that’s the only way you’re a true democracy. That’s the way that they do it in Australia [and] Brazil. I would make a check box that said, “I do not want to pick a candidate.” You would have the right to abstain, but you’d have to show up. Then I think we’d have a better count of what people want. 

Prop 8 was turned down in California because the Utah Mormons invested millions and millions of dollars in a state that they don’t even live in, to turn down a proposition, you know? How fair is that? That doesn’t make any sense.

I think all of those decisions make a difference, and make me feel empowered in a way that yelling and protesting never did. 

Self Worth-O-Meter (Protectograph, steel, brass)

What’s the most difficult thing you’ve ever had to do?Learning to like cilantro! I used to hate it. It tasted like soap, and I moved to
Brazil as a cilantro-averse vegetarian. They put meat and cilantro in pretty much everything but morning smoothies. After a few weeks, I decided I liked food more than I hated cilantro, and started trying to phase into it.

It used to make me gag a little. Now, sometimes I steal a little from my housemates. I haven't fully committed yet and never bought any myself, but I see it in my future.

What are your thoughts on the idea of loneliness? 

That it happens. And if you can make it work for you, all the better. I think a lot of people can use loneliness to create amazing things. I think it’s also really important to not let it become a cycle, and have tactics to get out of it, if you need to. But appreciate it for what it can give you, when it’s there.

What’s your philosophy on love? 

I think the more childlike you can be about love the better. It’s really important not to be jaded, and to be able to keep yourself open to loving other people, being able to show affection in multiple ways. It’s what makes the world good. 

And death? 

I kind of relate it to how I think about relationships. That in the end every relationship ends. You either break up or somebody dies. Then you have a choice. With that knowledge you can choose to go into it thinking it’s going to last forever, or go into it knowing it’s going to end. I feel like it’s the same as life. You know it’s going to end. So you might as well choose it while you’ve got it.