About Julie

The following is excerpted from an article featured in the Azle News with the permission of: Bob Buckel, Publisher

Most people who do some kind of art, do it because they simply have no choice – they can’t not create. Julie Clark fits that mold to a T. A stay-at-home mom, wife of a Navy man with two boys, a three-year-old girl and three boxer dogs two of them rescued pound puppies it would be easy for Julie to take her precious few free moments and slip away for a bubble bath, some chocolate or even something stronger. Instead, she creates crosses, beautiful, meaningful crosses that reach out and touch people’s hearts. They’re not just a hobby, or even an art. They’re a ministry.

 

As for the designs they just keep coming, often while she’s in church. She keeps a notebook with her at all times, and often when her pastor thinks she’s taking notes on the sermon, she’s drawing designs. “They come so fast I just tell everybody it’s not me. It’s as clear as day somebody will say something and it will just pop into my head.” Her first design said “Alleluia” and she took that as a message. “That means ‘Praise God’ and that’s the reason I’m doing this,” she said.

The start of the art

Julie started cutting wood about nine years ago when she decided to make ornaments for the Christmas tree. “Newly married people don’t have ornaments,” she said. She took one to an ornament exchange party and the ladies “went crazy” over it. They wanted to see more, and in two weeks she had made $300 enough to buy a DeWalt 20-inch variable speed scroll saw. “My boys call it a “squirrel saw,” she laughed. When that saw broke down, she bought another one then she went to the website, read the manual and figured out how to fix the first saw herself (“I called DeWalt and told them they should hire me!”) Now she has two saws which work out nicely because two mornings a week she has a student come in to learn the craft from her. “It’s a real blessing because we can both cut at the same time,” Clark said.

The business end

As much as she loves making wooden crosses, the smaller magnetic ones may be where the money is, she said. They can be mass-produced and sold in stores, and she has already figured out how to make them at a profit. “With the wood crosses, it’s art. I can just make so many,” she said. “But with the magnetic ones, it’s manufacturing. We haven’t had any roadblocks yet. We found a source of material that made it possible for us to wholesale them.” Clark originally got into it just to make a little extra beyond the butter-and-egg money her husband brings home. “I am a stay-at-home mom,” she said. “I’m not out to be a big businesswoman. I just do this to make a little extra – something to make life a little more comfortable.”

But having something to sell makes it easier for Clark to satisfy her natural generosity. Azle’s Relay for Life raffled off a Hope cross made of several different woods as a fundraiser. She also made a stained-glass window out of multiple woods for her church to raffle for their Lord’s Acre fundraiser.” I can’t give a lot of money,” she said. “But I can make something.” Julie and Paul will have been married 13 years this October. They are both originally from New Orleans, although they went to different schools. As a couple, they have lived in Kingsport, Tennessee, Pascagoula, Mississippi, then New Orleans before moving to Texas almost three years ago. Paul is a senior chief petty officer in the U.S. Navy, stationed at NAS/JRB Fort Worth. He is planning on retiring next year and they want to stay right here. “We love it here,” she said. “We’re at home.”

 

Contact Julie at:

 817.800.3465