Author: ruhlwrite

Throughout her life, Stacy Kovacs has marched to the steady beat of a drum. Listening to its staccato sound soothes her. “It’s a physical and emotional release,” says Stacy, who started banging out beats on the instrument when she was 8. “Playing in a marching band is about music and movement, choreography and camaraderie.” As she’s pondering the power of the percussive, she’s petting her 6-year-old cats, Louie and Libby, rescues who may or may not be brother and sister.…

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AJ can’t be with us today, so his mother, Christine Perrelli, is going to speak for him. She promised him she would. He was her first-born. He was imaginative and intelligent. He was a dancer and an actor. He lit up a stage even when the lights were down. He had a big heart. You would have loved him. Everyone did. Which is why his death six years ago, at age 26, was so tragic. AJ had so much going for him. He had toured the world performing in “Disney Live! Three…

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Four. That’s the number of things that Nur Asik likes to be doing at one time to keep her creativity flowing. Right now, that means she’s working as a restaurant server/events planner, a magazine creative director, a jewelry designer and a commercial interior designer. “I love multitasking,” she says, sitting at the dining table of the spacious two-bedroom apartment/atelier she shares with her older sister. The chair next to her is occupied by a Brother sewing machine. That,…

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In her artistically arranged apartment/atelier, Vendula Kalinova has seven sewing machines, 14 birds, seven dressmaker forms and a fluffy-puffy Persian cat named Emma who spends her days prancing on patterns and batting at tape measures. It’s early morning, and the canaries, caged in the kitchen, are singing their hearts out. As the finches look on, Vendula lets Burda the parrot perch on her hand. All of these creatures in this immersive oasis, and, in fact, everything in the world,…

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Janete Chris is arranging silver scissors on a mirrored tray at her styling station. Cutting hair, at least in her hands, is an art form, which is why she has 27 styles of scissors at her side. “It’s not my entire collection,” says Janete, the owner of the hair salon that bears her name. “I have more at home.” She opens a pair of boxes and places her set of Edward Scissorhands-like cutting claws next to the scissors. Janete, who has long golden hair and fire engine-red…

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