For Andrea Miller, losing her job was the best thing to happen to her.
At 55, she was ready for a change.
“Probably the job loss was serendipitous,” Miller said of her pandemic layoff from the marketing field.
“It didn’t seem [so] at the time, but now looking back on it, I think that really pushed me to go and do something I really wanted to do.”
One day she walked into the former Botanicals Gift Shop in downtown Fredericton and asked the owner if he would ever consider selling the gallery space.
She had no formal background in art, but had grown up with a strong appreciation for local craft and artists.
A deal was soon struck. Miller was the proud new owner of what would soon become The Artisan District.
“It’s much easier to do your job when you love what you do,” Miller said.
She agonized over every detail as she began to set up the store, but it started to come together.
“Each little bit, every time I took a little step, it felt like I was being pulled instead of pushed,” Miller said.
She intentionally retained all the artists who previously sold their work in the last shop, and added on more to curate a Maritime-only art gallery.
Miller includes an artist bio and description of their work next to each display area. She occasionally invites the artists into the shop to make art for a few hours for customers to watch.
Miller is well-versed in the stories about the artists who sell in her store. She includes bios and explanations of each artist’s work process next to their displays. (Sam Farley/CBC News)
“Your store is your artists,” she said. “Without them, there’s just empty walls and shelves here.”
Before she knew it, opening day was upon her.
Two years later, she’s never looked back. Miller said she has a lot of late nights, but it’s worth it.
“It’s just a joyful place to work.”
Runs in the family
Miller credits her family’s support in opening her business, but perhaps her biggest influence is her late father.
He, too, changed careers later in life.
Ralph Miller grew up in Florenceville, N.B., and any breaks he had from the family farm were spent fishing on the St. John River.
Ralph Miller, Andrea’s father, displays one of his fishing flies. He changed careers later in life to open his sporting goods store, which Andrea credits as one of her inspirations. (Andrea Miller)
He began collecting discarded fishing hooks found along the banks of the river, and taught himself to tie flies.
Before he knew it, local fishermen took note and started buying his flies.
Despite this success, he went on to become a teacher.
But the craftsman’s life eventually called him back, and Ralph opened his sporting goods shop at age 42.
Andrea Miller said the shop was his true passion, and he soon amassed a strong customer base.
“People enjoyed going in and socializing with him. He exuded that love of what he did and people felt very welcome to go in and shoot the breeze with him,” Miller said.
“I think he showed me that if you love what you do, you will be successful at it. You will be able to do it. That stayed with me certainly for a long time.”
Her first artist
One of the first shelves a customer sees when entering the shop holds the pottery of Maria Guevara.
Colourful, detailed mugs depicting Fredericton’s skyline sit among larger plates and dishes.
Guevara had sold her work in the old gallery. When Miller wanted to start asking artists to join her new shop, Guevara was the first call.
“Oh my god, I said, of course, that will be great!” Guevara said.
Pottery artist Maria Guevara was the first artist Miller asked to join her new store. (Sam Farley/CBC News)
Guevara said Miller is a great representative of her artists and that she cares to understand the process they each put into their art.
“She’s always asking me, ‘How did you do this?’ or ‘Tell me the process, step by step.’ I feel like she’s understanding my craft,” Guevara said.
Guevara described some relationships between an artist and their gallery as simply dropping off art to sell and that’s it.
But that’s not the case with Miller.
“If you understand how the work is made … it is easier to explain to clients how it was made. And that gives more meaning to the object or the art,” Guevara said.
Similar to Miller, Guevara got into her love of art later in life.
She immigrated from Mexico with her family 15 years ago and decided to attend craft college for pottery.
In Miller, she finds not only a business partner, but a friend.
“Probably we understand each other in that way, and that helps to have this good relationship,” Guevara said.
LONDON (AP) — With a few daubs of a paintbrush, the Brontë sisters have got their dots back.
More than eight decades after it was installed, a memorial to the three 19th-century sibling novelists in London’s Westminster Abbey was amended Thursday to restore the diaereses – the two dots over the e in their surname.
The dots — which indicate that the name is pronounced “brontay” rather than “bront” — were omitted when the stone tablet commemorating Charlotte, Emily and Anne was erected in the abbey’s Poets’ Corner in October 1939, just after the outbreak of World War II.
They were restored after Brontë historian Sharon Wright, editor of the Brontë Society Gazette, raised the issue with Dean of Westminster David Hoyle. The abbey asked its stonemason to tap in the dots and its conservator to paint them.
“There’s no paper record for anyone complaining about this or mentioning this, so I just wanted to put it right, really,” Wright said. “These three Yorkshire women deserve their place here, but they also deserve to have their name spelled correctly.”
It’s believed the writers’ Irish father Patrick changed the spelling of his surname from Brunty or Prunty when he went to university in England.
Raised on the wild Yorkshire moors, all three sisters died before they were 40, leaving enduring novels including Charlotte’s “Jane Eyre,” Emily’s “Wuthering Heights” and Anne’s “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.”
Rebecca Yorke, director of the Brontë Society, welcomed the restoration.
“As the Brontës and their work are loved and respected all over the world, it’s entirely appropriate that their name is spelled correctly on their memorial,” she said.
