Meet Valerie Szarek | Valerie A szarek: Breezy Mountain Leather Artisan / Poet / Musician / Shamanic Practitioner

We had the good fortune of connecting with Valerie Szarek and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Valerie, we’d love to hear more about how you thought about starting your own business?
I founded my first business at 10 years old making bookmarks from green felt and hair-clips. They looked like alligators with google eyes, tongues, nostrils, and their mouths opened to hold the page. In 1972 fresh out of High School I founded Breezy Lady Leather, later known as Breezy Mountain Leather which is still flourishing 50 years later. I’m not sure I thought about it much. I was an artist and wanted to make my way in the world this way and found my niche. I made the everyday things people carried such as belts, wallets, bags. I’ve designed for IBM, Coors, The Marlboro vest, and start-up tech companies. I have always had work wherever I live because people always want and need leather goods.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
I have been a Leather Artisan for 50 years! (Breezy Mountain Leather) I realize it’s unusual to stay with one art form for this long and am considered a master artisan. What this means to me is at about the 20 year mark there was a transformation within where my body knows the material and process deeper than my mind does. There is a profound familiarity when I touch the leather and my hands innately know what to do with it as though it as a part of me.
Poetry is an equal love for me and lights my world in a way that nothing else does. I have a very active mind and am always taking in the world on many different levels at the same time and poetry is the vessel for capturing and sharing it. This is where the magic lives. This is where I lead and follow and grow. A place to discover what is true amidst the shallow noise. I can teach people how to make my leather bags but no one can write my poems. I am a performance artist, playing Native American Flute along side Spoken Word. My poems are medicines that can only do their work in the world if I embody and offer the words into the world. I study Shamanism and energy and have a healing practice. I also teach soul-centered writing workshops each month.

I’ve written all my life but would say I became a Poet on the week of 9/11 tower attacks. I was dismayed by what I was hearing around me, especially about finding an enemy to war against. I started to hear rhyming words as I was walking around my house, driving, trying to sleep, etc. I wrote them down as though I was taking dictation and ended up with a life-changing poem that said everything that was in my heart/mind. I stuck it in my jeans pocket and read it to everyone who would listen. I’ve been writing, taking classes and teaching ever since. It took many years to dare call myself a Poet as it was so sacred and precious and I didn’t know when I would arrive at that identity. Today I introduce myself as Poet Val as it it such an important part of my walk in the world. I have a goal to read a poem to someone every day. IRS agent, Comcast customer service, a cop on the corner, pharmacist, washing-machine salesman, baristas. All are offered a one-minute, memorized poem. Many times people cry upon receiving them. It is a way to humanize and see each other in an important way that recognizes our shared humanity. It opens doors and smooths our daily interactions as we can see and honor each other in a deeper way.

I have to believe in myself and the importance of these poems as healing, invitational medicines. I know poems speak for us, hold universal and personal truth, realign us with what is most important, open our hearts and minds, remind of our connections to everything and restore us to sanity. They take us into the wilderness and return us in a better way than when we began.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
We would definitely schedule The Mercury Cafe on Sunday evening for The Jam Before the Slam. I’d get on stage and perform spoken word with the improv band Art Compost and The Word Mechanics over dinner. A great concert with a picnic dinner at Red Rocks, howling with the moon rise. An afternoon of writing at The Botanical Gardens or the Denver Art Museum. A gallery walk and coffee shop along Santa Fe. The Tattered Cover or West Side Books. A day trip to Rocky Mountain National Park or Idaho Springs for a soak. Gypsy House poetry.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
I have been a leather working artisan for 50 years, have a healing practice for 45 years, and have been a musician my whole life. What really lights me up now is poetry and performance. Everything I am, everything I experience and care about, all of my skills and talents and challenges come together in poetry. I have learned a tremendous amount through Naropa Summer Writing Program and The Foothills Chapter of The Columbine State Poetry Society. I have learned about the importance and responsibility of being a poet such as myself. I have learned to trust the words and forms and medicine that arises from poetry.

Website: https://www.poetval.com , http://www.breezymountainleather.com/