Today we’d like to introduce you to Bridget Parlato.
Hi Bridget, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
On the eve of my 50th birthday, my dad died.
One of my sisters asked if I wanted to help wash and care for his body. I did.
So there we sat in the funeral home’s supply room (unembalmed bodies aren’t allowed in the viewing rooms), smoothing his skin with aromatic oils and lining his cremation casket with botanicals we’d gathered from our gardens. (Yes, it was surreal…and one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever done.)
Ten months later, my mom died. A month after that, the dog died. The next month, the cat.
That was Super-Sad 2017.
My dad was a maker, an industrial arts teacher and a farrier. His hands were magnificent. By the time he died, though, they were in a state I found heartbreaking.
My mom was a maker too, but decades of societal norms shaped her into someone smaller than she was. Also, heartbreaking.
She was sent from art school to an unwed mothers’ home in the ’50s to give birth and surrender her child. She went on to have six more children, the last of whom died the day he was born. She never finished art school and instead, became an occupational therapist—and a sufferer of debilitating depression.
She never thought of herself as an artist though she could paint, sew, embroider, crochet, knit, batik, and threw beautiful pottery when she attended that art school – where I’d later earn my Bachelor’s degree in Fine Art.
It was in one of her bowls that I washed my Dad’s hands as he lay in his casket, transforming them back into the ones I’d held—and marveled at—in Catholic church when I was too young to understand the sermons.
Before Super-Sad ‘17, I could have summed up my life like this: youngest of five, country-raised, star art student, BFA, MFA, work, marriage, family, house, two cars, and a twenty-year graphic design career in Baltimore.
Fill in the gaps, though, and it’s a different story. I was a single mother during my son’s first year, laying vinyl in sign shops, sculpting for an ornamental plaster company, freelancing for event firms, living in the red, and thanking my lucky stars for Medicaid and WIC.
I married when my son turned one and life did get better, but juggling full-time work, parenting, a new marriage, a house that needed repairs, used cars that did too, and student loans? Well…babies, bills, and busted water heaters don’t care if you have ambitions.
Following Super-Sad 2017, things got darker. The next two years brought cancer diagnoses for both my sister and my husband. He went into a full-blown midlife crisis while I went into menopause. At the same time. Yeah.
Then? Enter a worldwide pandemic, a son rebelling against us and lockdown who bolted for Colorado, and a graphic design career that ground to a halt. I found myself working in a flower shop for $15 an hour with what looked like a grey divorce coming on.
Here’s the spoilers if you’ve hung in there this long: grief stays, but it gets lighter. I landed a post-covid non-profit gig I really liked. My son is a happy man with a wonderful girlfriend in Colorado. My husband is still my husband (yay!). My loved ones are both cancer-free.
Sounds like a lot of happy endings, but things don’t magically get better. They take work.
So, I got curious.
Instead of looking outward for someone to blame, I started looking inward at my own patterns. It’s humbling to admit you don’t have all the answers. Harder still to realize some of the answers you’ve been carrying around your whole life aren’t actually the right ones.
My inner narratives needed deconstructing and rebuilding.
That’s where the pros came in. There were therapists (his, mine, and ours), self-help books, podcasts, HRT, hundreds of miles hiking Loch Raven Reservoir, and countless hours patiently retraining my own thoughts. I wasn’t trying to become someone different. I was trying to become someone life couldn’t make smaller.
Digging into yourself is a lot like peeling an onion. You lose those brittle outer layers until you get down to the tender stuff. The process stinks. There are lots of tears. But hey…onions are sweet, and they’re in just about EVERYTHING that makes life tasty!
Digging can take a long time too (depending on how honest you’re willing to be with yourself). It’s tough, but along with stuff you might have been burying, it brings your passions to the surface.
I’d always loved nature, so I went after environmental projects. I taught myself new computer programs. I applied for scholarships, residencies, grants, and exhibitions. I started a community anti-trash initiative and a recycling education program that I taught in Baltimore-area schools. I created art from trash and designed environmental campaigns.
When my husband left for a few months to work on his own issues, I thought, “Well…this is it.” So I finished a children’s book about plastic pollution called Plastic Land.
I made purpose my driver.
None of this happened in a neat, organized, linear fashion. I worked at it between losses, bills, loneliness, and grief, like exercise or maintenance medicine. It was both. Making kept me sane, gave me confidence, strengthened my resilience, and let me lose myself in creative flow.
And that 50th birthday spent caring for my dad’s body?
Afterward, I gathered a few things from his desk: his folding ruler, horseshoe nails, and his red suspenders. I’d also saved an envelope containing the hair from the last haircut I gave him before he died.
Such personal stuff often gets tucked away in boxes somewhere but I wanted to make something out of them, an art piece that I could see, a daily reminder. I wanted to build a reliquary.
The problem was, these items were precious to me and I’d only have one shot at using them for such an important piece of work. I needed skills I didn’t have yet, which led me to the Baltimore Jewelry Center.
I built that reliquary. Then another for my sister. I started getting my jewelry into exhibitions, getting awards, landing residencies and selling my work.
I honestly thought I was taking classes so I could learning enough to make that very personal remembrance piece for my dad. In retrospect, I was unknowingly opening my next chapter.
This past February, I stepped away from my nonprofit position. Since then, I’ve been seeking cause-related design work, overhauling my home office and turning the dream of a home jewelry studio into a reality. But it wasn’t until I attended a women’s retreat about a month ago that I had the eye-opening realization that there’s a word for the woman I’ve been becoming.
Crone.
Not the pejorative, historical, mainstream version of the word, but the version women have reclaimed: someone who sits comfortably in her own experience and wisdom, has become more authentic, more unapologetic, and finally started trusting her own voice.
So I’m gathering up my skirts and stepping happily into Crone-dom. Some might frame that as a last chapter. I see it as an arrival. Not because I’ve reached some magical place where life stops being hard, but because now, for the first time, I feel equipped. I’m old enough, clear enough—and maybe wise enough—to keep life from making me smaller than I am.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
I think my story runs kind of long and does incorporate a lot about my work. I uploaded pictures that for the most part, correlate with the story. I don’t expect all of the pictures will be included.
1. Reliquary 1 for My Father
2. Reliquary 2 for My Father
3. In Honor of Her Honor – Lace Collar/Warrior Breastplate, 1000 paper beads cut from the dissenting opinions of Ruth Bader Ginsburg
4. Bottle Return event email from my community anti-trash initiative.
5. Flyer for Baltimore School recycling program with the RecyQueen
6. Litter campaign – Keep it Neat from Stoop to Street
7. Baltimore Oyster Partnership truck wrap for Waterfront Partnership of Baltimore
8. Book spread from my children’s book, Plastic Land
9. Plastic Land book shot
10. Cigarette Planet sculpture and cigarette butt litter campaign
11. Jewelry production line
Networking and finding a mentor can have such a positive impact on one’s life and career. Any advice?
I was a multidisciplinary artist before that was an accepted thing to be. Back then, the message was this: specialize. To me, finding a mentor felt like the pressure to pick a lane, so I avoided it. Looking back, that was a pretty limited view of what mentorship could be.
Today, I consider both my business coach, Shawn Fink, and my therapist, Patricia “Kevin” Odean, to be mentors. They’ve been instrumental in my growth.
What I’ve learned is this: growth starts with being open to other people’s perspectives. So here’s something to remember- the next time someone is talking about something you don’t know much about, don’t pretend to understand. Ask them to educate you. Ask questions. Be curious. People love sharing what they know, and you’ll leave knowing more than you did before. And suddenly, you’re free! To be present, to be curious, to really listen. That’s when growth happens.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.bspokenstudios.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bspokenstudios/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100063297453518
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bridget-parlato-6a06263/
