1. The Jewelry
Under her brand, Nova Vita Co., the Lindbergh High School senior makes drop earring designs by hand, usually prepping with a few sketches. Her approach is organic: “It’s very much just whatever I can get out of the clay I make,” she says. “I get very bored easily, so after I make one batch, I’ll get bored of blue, for instance, so I’ll work on some earth tones next.”
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2. Vintage Beginnings
At 14, Callan opened a Depop store to sell vintage clothing. “It was that teenager stage of ‘I don’t have a car, and I need to make money,’” she says. She jazzed up some garments, such as painting Matisse-inspired art onto pants.
3. Chalk and Sand
For some pieces, Callan mixes her own colors into her clay with chalk that’s been shaved into powder and combined in multiple shades to achieve a marbleized effect. She’ll add sand if she wants extra texture. “It’s a lot of fun,” she says. “You can get little extra flecks of color that you wouldn’t get if you were mixing clay alone.”
4. Balls of Clay
“They’re like little planets,” Callan says of the balls of excess marbleized clay that were too small to make it to the cutting board.
5. Beaded Lady
At 3 a.m. one sleepless night, Callan was inspired to make this piece of art, carefully arranging seed beads on canvas. “Pretty much all of my life is local artists, something I made at midnight, or something I found at Goodwill,” she says, laughing.
