A free-wheeling and reflective conversation with local artisan Sandi Rusch is featured in this week’s column. Warm-hearted and unafraid to show off her battle scars, Sandi is known for her quirky artwork and her big smile. She matter-of-factly states on her website, “I am an ‘awkward girl.’ I am also an artist. When I combine the two, some unusual things are born.”

By Cathy Miller

Born and bred in New Jersey, Sandi Rusch has lived in Summit, Morristown, Succasunna, Budd Lake, and then Panther Valley. Now in Belvidere, Sandi beams, “I love it here, I love this house, I love the property, I love Warren County, it’s stunning.”

Sandi worked for “the best dentist in New Jersey” running his office for 27 years before retiring. She noted, Dr. Gary Vander Vliet of Hackettstown “was awesome. It was great to work for him,” adding, “I’m overdue for a cleaning!”

Sandi and husband Jeff recently observed their five year wedding anniversary with a Celebration of Love and a month of glad tidings.

Jeff started the Silo House Concert Series with his first wife, later reviving it with Sandi at their townhome, hosting two shows in 2014. “We jumped back into it when we moved to Belvidere, it was our first Celebration of Love. Barb Maltese and Kevin Higgins performed then and have played most every year since,” says Sandi. “They’ve become very close friends.”

From musical performances to musical instruments, talk shifted to Sandi’s recently completed and widely recognized mandala design on musician Gift Venezio’s Martin guitar. Gift had talked about having Sandi paint a design on her guitar for years. When talk turned to action Sandi said, “It was scary. I wasn’t worried I’d make bad art because I know how to draw a mandala. Just taking the strings off to paint was frightening. My jaw was so clenched, I had TMJ issues for weeks. I enjoyed most of it and loved the way it turned out, but it was a lot of stress. I’d painted on three guitars previously but they were all pulled from the garbage, so it didn’t matter if I wrecked them.” Gift has done shows playing the guitar, name-checking Sandi as the artist. As for the guitar strings she removed, Sandi made a beautiful bracelet with them.

Delving further into her artwork, one discovers a unique look to her lettering, coloring and drawing. Sandi said her style is evolving. It started in 2002 while living in Budd Lake when her girlfriend invited her to a Creative Memories scrapbook party. She remembers, “My first reaction was I didn’t want to go, I had no interest, could barely draw stick figures, I didn’t even doodle. But I went anyway and fell in love with scrapbooking. The next day I went to a craft store and bought everything they offered.”

She continued, “While I understood what Creative Memories could teach me, I didn’t like their type of art so I played around with it. Along came the computer, the internet, websites, and message boards. On Scrapbook.com, the number two scrapbooking website in the world at the time, I found galleries of pages and realized that’s what I wanted my scrapbook pages to look like, and eventually, after studying many techniques, they did.”

Scrapbooking eventually drew Sandi into the arts. She credits Tim Holtz, a designer for Ranger Industries, and a big name in scrapbooking and the mixed media art world, with teaching her how to do grungy and cool-looking stuff. They became friends in 2004 and remain so to this day.

“Then came Brave Girls Club, run by Melody Ross and Kathy Wilkins. Melody taught women how to stand up for themselves, how to live their authentic life. I went through all their courses, including Brave Girls Camp in Idaho. Melody helped me become who I am today. This is not who I was, this is who I was meant to be.”

Experiencing this in her fifties, she knew she wanted a different life, but didn’t know how to change it. She assumed, “I’m just going to be this for the rest of my life. It’ll be all right. Until it wasn’t.” Together, Brave Girls Club and AA helped turn Sandi’s life around. And that’s a chapter that Sandi wants to share.

As a child, Sandi asked her mother if she was pretty (she always wanted to be a model). Her mom said she was cute. The opportunity years later presented itself with an open call for silver-haired models in 2017. Photographer Ben Winkler worked with Sandi and several other women to publish a coffee table book entitled “Faces Of Silver.”

Sandi fondly remembered the experience. “It was an awesome day and I felt like a real model. I never had a chance prior to that, but my silver hair got me a place in the book. We shot at a retired train station in Boonton, inside and outside many of the trains. It was April 29, 95 degrees and humid. I was melting, but it was worth it. I’m still friends with quite a few of the ladies on the shoot.”

Interested in all the arts, including beading, drawing and working with paper clay, Sandi is constantly creating, jumping from one thing to another. If I like doing something I keep it in the roster, if I don’t like it I throw it out.”

She also loves making bird homes, which began in their townhouse. She said, “I’d picked up a wooden birdhouse at a garage sale and thought I’d paint it and hang it outside on my little deck. Jeff brought home a bunch of auto parts, and I used them on the birdhouse along with my scrapbooking and mixed media things. I was in one of a big name artist’s groups and she opened up a thread saying show me some art that you’re making. This big name artist, someone who could get $5,000 for a painting, wanted to buy my birdhouse!”

After Sandi made another birdhouse, people reached out to commission her. Most of her birdhouses are indoor decor, but she creates outdoor birdhouses as well. “I just have to be told at the start because it’s a whole different process.”

Sandi and Jeff would haunt Five Acres Flea Market, garage sales, and their basement. “That’s how I filled my baker’s rack with birdhouse stuff,” she said. “Vendors set aside piles of things for me. It was a weekly Sunday outing. Anything that looked interesting or particularly grungy, rusty or yucky I bought. We went to the flea market, we saw our favorite vendors, we made deals and came home with treasures. But only after we crossed the road to Crossroads Diner for breakfast and a visit with all our favorite waitresses.”

For Sandi, one of the biggest criteria for selecting all these bits and pieces is how to attach them to the birdhouse. Some are impossible to attach. She noted, “Attaching is my favorite part, the challenge of getting that piece to stay in place.” Many of her tools are mechanized to help with the assembly. “I have battery-operated screwdrivers, drills, sanders and a drill press to help get the job done, because my hands won’t do those things anymore.

”Future endeavors? Sandi has a few. “I desperately want to try pottery. Jeff and I are thinking about taking pottery lessons. For some reason I want to try quilting, I don’t know why. I hated sewing in high school – that obligatory apron in home ec class. But it’s in my future.” She doesn’t jump on bandwagons, preferring to do her own thing in her own time.”

As for acquiring one of Sandi’s one-of-a-kind pieces, she said, “If I put something up on Facebook and somebody wants to buy it, that’s great,” Sandi noted. “Birdhomes are different, they’re all commissioned.”

Sandi writes too. With editors lined up, she described her soon-to-be published novel “Summer of Sara” as “just chick-lit, a funny, romantic comedy with a little mean girl thing thrown in.” She unabashedly admitted, “I’ve been writing the same novel for ten years. Sometimes I’ll write 3,000 words, and leave it for a month or two. I’ll write 5,000 more words, and it goes away again. I know what’s going to happen and how I want it to end, although it’s morphed a little over the years, but it’s almost done. It’s written first person and most of the silly things that happen to Sara are things that have happened to me – weird, awkward, stupid things that I’ve been caught doing. I want to see my book in print so I’m going to self-publish and sell it if I can, doing a presale to kind of fund the book.”

Sandi expressed a deep desire to share her story of AA and her road to sobriety.

“I had been alcoholically drinking since my teens. My rock bottom was a photograph of me down the shore. I was vain enough to say I don’t want people seeing me like this. That day I finished off a bottle of red wine and knew it was going to be my last drink. I did something different. I counted on people and told them what I was doing.”

Sandi remarked, “The longer I was sober, the longer I knew I’m not living my right life.” She managed to make it 11 months. Her sobriety date is July 31, 2009. That June, in pain, she wanted to drink. A couple friends urged her to join AA. Knowing her then-husband would not be supportive, she finally decided to “come into the room.” She found a Friday afternoon meeting at a church in Stanhope. After that initial meeting, she said, “I felt safe for the first time in my life. I felt better. I left there with hope. But I knew I had to tell my husband. And I knew I wanted to go to another meeting.”

She left her husband, but not without a network of women behind her, including AA and a core group that had been together since 2000. “My friends, my office, my boss – everybody gathered me up and showed me what to do. And here I am. I know I manifested this, because this is everything I ever wanted. Those first few years were just learning how to live sober.”

Sandi explained her personal take on AA. “I don’t care who believes in what. There’s a lot of ‘God’ talk in AA, but it’s of a higher power. Your higher power can be anything you want. Mine’s very different from a Christian’s, but I still have a higher power. You find what works for you. As long as you have a higher power, you’re all set.”

She added, “I stopped attending meetings years ago. Around year seven or eight you’re feeling ok, you’ve got this. Sometimes that’s a lie, sometimes it’s your alcoholism saying you’re fine. But sometimes you really are ok. I talked to a lot of people about it. I still have my big book. It’s always with me because I may need a meeting someday. AA has a 5% success rate – I’m one of the lucky five.”

Sandi smiled, “Nine years ago, my life was a closed book with lots of secrets. It was a horrible way to live. I’m an open book now. I’m happy and have nothing to hide. Life is so freaking good! I wouldn’t change a thing – well maybe adopt a dog [Sandi and Jeff have two cats – Boots, 13, and Pearl, 17]. I have an amazing husband, four grown bonus children [Jeff’s children], bonus grandchildren, and a new bonus grand baby on the way!

To contact Sandi for commissions or purchase, visit: theawkwardgirl.com.
Learn more about “Summer of Sara” at www.facebook.com/Alexandra-Rusch-Author.