Meet Michelle B. Hultz, creator of soulful works of art and Michelle b Studio
This Q&A, facilitated by Jeremiah Gardner of the Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation, was originally published for Hazelden Betty Ford’s monthly Recovery Advocacy Update. If you’d like to receive our advocacy emails, subscribe today.
Michelle Hultz began her artistic and entrepreneurial journey early. By age 10, she was painting names and designs on household items including hairbrushes, combs, measuring cups and toothbrushes — and loading them up in her red wagon to sell throughout the neighborhood. Later, after graduating from Texas Tech University with a bachelor’s degree in fashion design and a minor in art, she started her first business as an adult: Artful Attire in Dallas, silk-screening garments for companies such as Roper, Panhandle Slim and the music duo Brooks & Dunn.
As her career launched, Michelle also struggled with alcohol use. She says she always had a drink at the drafting table. Eventually, her family wanted her to get help, but she had an overwhelming fear she would not be able to create art without a drink. For too many years, drinking and creativity had gone hand in hand. Lucky for her, recovery and her new spiritual life unleashed even more creativity.
Within two years of getting treatment and initiating recovery in Minnesota, Michelle started a new business creating designs for recovery-themed greeting cards, clothing and jewelry. Her work was even featured on the cover of Hazelden Publishing’s catalog in 1995. Today, the Arizona resident makes an even broader array of “soulful works of art” (see MichelleBStudio.com), and we enjoyed catching up with her.
What does recovery look like for you, and how has it empowered different aspects of your life?
Recovery is still for me today, one day at a time. This might sound elementary but it is, truthfully, the way I live my life. When I’m not staying in “today” and “the now,” I find myself in states of anxiousness and/or depression because both feet are not operating in the now — and my feet are straddling today. When I’m straddling today, then I’m living in fantasy. When I stay in the now, this is where I find my Higher Power. It is only here that I find the still quiet voice that choose to call God. The voice may also come as a gut feeling or a synchronistic event. My recovery has taught me simple things but not always are they easy to implement. I find it’s only by practice which becomes my experience that these simple things show up in my life. It’s not by knowledge alone.
What does it mean for you to share your recovery with others?
Sharing with another person my experience, strength and hope in recovery means giving back that which was so freely given to me. My experience with sharing my story with another person actually helps me grow, and it shines a light into my personal recovery. Sharing is healing and actually tends to benefit myself and the other person or people involved.
How has your recovery journey inspired your art?
My recovery has inspired me with my heart because as I entered recovery I was able to find my truth. Recovery opened my mind, my spirit and soul. Before recovery, I lived in the fear of sobriety taking away my creativity. However, to my amazement, after I got sober, it was with my sobriety that I gained a new perspective and a new pair of glasses. I entered the realm of the spirit that the fellowship had taught me. I began to feel my art within me and not just view art as a logical entity. I could see and feel my art from a place in my heart that was indescribable. I always say the art comes through me not from me.
What challenges and rewards have you experienced in your recovery as a result of your work as an artist?
The biggest challenge I encountered was learning how to create art sober. I did not think it was possible to design art without having a drink on my table. Being in recovery has breathed new life into my designs. Giving birth to new designs allows me to journey with others in their sobriety, and this has become my greatest reward as an artist.
What would you like more people to understand about recovery?
Recovery offers great rewards to those who seek it. Seek recovery and the spirit will enrich you and take you to places you’ve never experienced. I would also like others to know art can be a joyful and enlightening addition in their recovery, one day at a time.
