From Earth to Seed Beads - It's All in a Name

"Every thing must have a beginning ... 
and that beginning must be linked 
to something that went before" 
~ Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

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On various occasions, people have asked us about our company's name.  Pacha-who-ma? So, we figured that it's a good time to share a little background on where our name comes from and how it's evolving along with us.  

It's funny how a name becomes the entity it represents. It holds weight, a name.  Choosing a name for your business or life's work is like choosing a name for your child. It's something that has to have meaning for you, a word (or words) with significance. A name must sound good when one's a baby, but also has to grow and change with the entity. For us, Pachamama Native Art has changed with us over the past few years. We're evolving together and we want Pachamama Native Art to continue being a meaningful representation of our life's work and mission.

Pachamama Native Art comes from Pachamama, an Andean goddess of fertility, who watches over planting and harvesting Mother Earth. Sometimes, she's considered to be Mother Earth herself. We chose the name, Pachamama, so that we always remember where we come from, to be thankful for all we have been blessed with, and to give ourselves with love, joy and gratitude from our hearts. With great respect and humility, we chose her name to represent us and our work. The "Native Art" part comes from our love for art and from the following concept of Native - "being in the place or environment where a person was born or came into being". That made sense for us. Pachamama Native Art. We came into being in Oaxaca, even though the seeds were planted in Boston, where we had lived before. 

Speaking of planting seeds, it brings us to our other passion for Pachamama, besides making art and jewelry with beads. We've been planting seeds and growing some plants and veges on our rooftop, right outside the Pachamama studio. See? It all makes sense. Pachamama - planting seeds in earth, nurturing, harvesting, sharing. Pachamama Native Art - making seed bead creations, bead work, workshops to share what we've learned and to learn from what others have to share. Woah!  This is how we are growing with our name and our life's work. We receive, create, plant, harvest, share, give back. We spiral out and grow, just like plants, just like seed beads! It may sound fru-fru-ey, but it's who we are. 

Baby lettuce popped out. 

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Letting this lettuce go to seed to harvest the seeds. 

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