Episode 19: An Art Studio & a Legacy with Sharon Wunder

Look &/or listen as my friend & photo manager colleague shares the story of her art studio that is the Thing that brings her joy, magic & meaning. I met Sharon during the 2020 first & all virtual conference of The Photo Managers conference. Just three weeks before the planned in-person conference in Atlanta our fearless leader, founder Cathi Nelson & team quickly & beautifully delivered an amazing conference online!!! At that conference I had the honor of introducing my friend Bill Shapiro as one of our keynote speakers and co-author of a truly wonder-filled book called What We Keep. With her background in Feng Shui, Sharon resonated with Bill, Naomi & my own deep fascination and understanding of the knowledge that Things tell stories as surely as words do. This intro & a shared interest in the stories that our Things tell brought us into many breakout rooms over the course of that conference. I was intrigued by Sharon’s perspective on material culture, Feng shui & physical history. Sharon & I continued our conversations during the pandemic & I was SO lucky to meet her IRL at TPM 2022 conference in Denver and loan her my mini portable fan that I carry with me in Brooklyn (the campervan). I’m grateful she accepted my many invitations to be a featured story-sharer at several of my virtual and in-person Show & Tales for The Photo Managers over the years. With the inspiration from Bill & Naomi Wax’s book What We Keep, my story-sharing gatherings, and a diagnosis of Glioblastoma she started thinking about Things differently. Why had she been collecting watches all her life? Perhaps it’s because she lived with a deep knowing that she didn’t have time? Sharon didn’t resonate with the word Legacy. It felt cold to her. Focusing on financial & transactional matters. She wanted to add her special brand of warmth to the word and started several legacy projects using her photos & objects. She realized she could make goodbye gifts with love notes for each of her three 20-something year old “kids”. They are busy living their lives & Sharon doesn’t want to interfere…. she knows that this deep legacy work is just as much for her as it is for them. One of her first legacy projects, which I saw at the Denver conference, is a book filled with photos & stories of each one of her little ceramic villages that she bought every year to place on the fireplace mantel. It had become so cluttered & overwhelming that no one even looked at it anymore. They didn’t know what it was or why Sharon collected them & displayed these tiny villages every year. Now her children & family LOVE to look through that book while viewing the villages on the mantel. This was such a gift to Sharon & from her! When articles state that our children don’t want our things, it’s not the whole truth. But one thing is for certain, if they don’t know the story of your things the things are just things. Our loved ones want our stories more than any thing. Whether you have months or decades to live, make time to share, record & preserve your stories. It’ll be SO worth it! Another legacy project Sharon made a commitment to was to curate her massive photo collection. As a professional photographer, artist & Mom she had accumulated 52,000 photos over the years. They weren’t organized or categorized. She now has a beautifully organized & easily accessible collection of just 25,000. She can easily create all her legacy/goodbye gifts. Her daughter worried that there weren’t many mother-daughter photos of them, a particular problem for born digital images, but Sharon added tags to her collection and was able to share them with her daughter. This brought both of them much comfort. As Sharon closes up her life she has become even more passionate about three main things: 1.) Having open & honest conversations about death 2.) Her own legacy projects 3.) The Photo Managers conference Sharon has gen