Nothing symbolizes Christmas more simply and elegantly than a natural wreath. Its beauty is in its subtlety and detail. Of course, the beauty and detail of a wreath is reflective of the artist who created it. For Bird Creek resident, Cyndi Russell, making natural wreaths from a unique local source, birch twigs, has been both an artistic pursuit and one born of necessity. It was about ten years ago that Russell, 56, found herself becoming extremely cold all the time.
“I wore a hat for ten years because I couldn’t stand the cold,” she said as we talked in her cramped studio in a small cabin on her property in Bird. “I couldn’t stand the feeling of cold air on my head.”
It wasn’t until she became so ill and dwindled down to 90 pounds that she started to look into the symptoms of her illness. She discovered that she had a rare condition known as reflex sympathetic dystrophy, which causes her to experience extreme sensitivity to hot and cold. It also attacks the nervous system and immune system, making her vulnerable to colds and the flu. The disease has caused her to live somewhat of a reclusive life.
“I don’t like to get sick,” she said. “That’s pretty much why I had to find something I could do at home. That I could make a little money.”
Russell and her sister, Nancy Crisp, were working on their mutual art forms in late November in the cabin when we spoke. Her sister came to Alaska in 1975. Crisp came alone and met her husband the first day she arrived in the state. She too has a taste for the arts, specializing in wood burning pen art. She started 14 years ago after suffering multiple injuries in a car accident that required the Jaws of Life to rescue her. She broke her neck, both arms, and suffered a skull fracture. Needless to say, she’s lucky to be alive.
Crisp learned pen burning art on wood as a form of rehabilitation. “I just really enjoy it. As soon as I pick up that pen, all my worries go away,” she said.
Crisp, 55, no longer lives in Alaska, but tries to come back every year around the holidays to work at her sister’s studio. There’s a strong bond between the two sisters, one that is evident on their smiles and calm dispositions as they work intently in the tight quarters of the cabin.
Russell followed her sister to Alaska after visiting the state for ten years. Twice a year she would come up until she finally decided to move here permanently.
“I was visiting for six weeks,” she said, “and I stayed an extra two weeks and told Nancy I didn’t want to leave. So she said ‘don’t.’”
Russell moved to Alaska from Mt. Vernon, Washington on April 1, 1983. She owned a business back in Washington and eventually her entrepreneurial spirit returned and in 1989 she opened the Girdwood Café where the Silvertip Grill now operates. She ran the restaurant for five years.
She met her husband, Bill Russell, when they worked together at the Sitzmark Bar in Girdwood where she was a waitress from 1984 to 1989 and Bill was the bartender. Ten years after they met they got married in 1994.
In 1997, during a trip to New York in the Adirondack Mountain area where her husband is originally from, Russell discovered the beautiful art of making natural wreaths.
“I was in New York upstate and passed a barn that had them hanging all around it,” she recalled. “There was a young girl there, and she was having a garage sale. I asked her how to make them, and she showed me how to do everything.”
Ten years later, Russell has perfected the art of making natural wreaths. Her specialty is wreaths made from birch twigs. But the process of finding the right twigs didn’t come easily; it was an arduous and timely process of trial and error.
“First I tried using dry flowers, but I found that they couldn’t stand the climate, and they would fall off,” she said. “What I use now is silk flowers, faux, instead of dry flowers. It took about three years to figure out what kind of twigs to use. I tried alder twigs, rose-hips, and those were absolutely murder on your hands.”
Finally she happened upon birch twigs and found the perfect durable and beautiful missing piece to creating her natural wreaths. “I cut some twigs off my own trees in my yard, and said ‘here it is, this is the one.”
Russell only collects the birch twigs in the winter time, clipping around the bottom of the trees so not to hurt them. After collecting bags full of the twigs, she’s ready to begin the timely process of making natural wreaths out of them.
The final step in the process is to spray the wreaths with a clear lacquer to seal them.
“They can last ten years easily if they’re kept out of the rain,” Russell said. “Inside is the perfect spot, but a lot of people put them outside.”
The art of making natural wreaths is both a love of the process and beauty of the natural world, captured in an intricately woven piece of natural art. But, as was the case for her sister, Nancy, Cyndi has benefited from her art in a therapeutic way as well.
“It’s sedating to me, that and my flowers,” she said.
Russell’s natural wreaths are impressive, but her gardening skills and vast collection of flowers, are even more extraordinary. As summer roles around, you will see a greenhouse and outdoor garden of flowers as impressive as any commercial nursery.
But during the holidays and winter months, it’s Russell’s natural wreaths that preoccupy her time and attracts visitors from miles around. It’s a limited time for holiday shoppers, usually Russell only opens her gift shop for a couple of weeks in November. However she works year-round making her wreaths for custom orders and special events such as weddings, which she occasionally holds at her home because of the picturesque floral courtyard.
It’s a love of life and the outdoors that initially drew Russell to Alaska and Bird Valley, and it’s her art that captures it and allows her to heal each day.
“It’s taken me this long to start to recover, slowly but surely,” she said as she put the final twig in a newly created wreath. “I come out here and forget everything, forget that I hurt.”