One of my favorite aspects of working with the handmade community, besides getting to drool over all the wonderful handmade goodies and occasionally even getting to buy them, is learning about all the wonderful artists.

One absolutely unique artist that really caught my eye was Sam, in English, or Awagadoga (Standing Deer) in Cherokee.  Sam is part Cherokee and lives simply in the Missouri River Hills in the traditional Cherokee lifeways along with his wife and son.  While he has a Masters Degree in Teaching with a major in History, his true passion is the earth itself and his Native American heritage.

Sam describes his life as “simple in right relationship with all things including the two legged, four legged, winged, finned, plant, and creeping crawling things.  He lives his life in balance with the Seven Directions; East representing sacred, North the mental, West the physical and South the natural as well as the Upper, Lower and Present world.  He grows tobacco as well as western cedar and sage.  His life stresses cooperation and reciprocity rather than competition.  These spiritual beliefs are easily found in his artwork.

One of Sam’s passions is the interplay of light and glass.  His Artfire shop represents this when you look at his solar jars and soon his solar bottles and insulators.  He augments the glass with sandblasting and painted images that show his respect for the natural world.  He says that he has a head full of future ideas that I’m sure will make their way to his Artfire shop.

Are you ready to see what a man with a passion for nature and the spiritual world produces?  Well, Sam is easy to find as Sunworx on Arfire.  Be sure to check back often as some of his other solar creations make their way into his shop.