MONROE — Melissa Kieler is a true lover of art in any form, and it is a part of her daily life in one way or another. She has engaged with multiple art forms, but she is currently focusing on being a musician, as well as wire wrapping, mainly creating pendants.

“I’m a musician as well, but wire wrapping is actually what I’m specializing in I guess a little bit more. I do the more simplistic, I guess you would say, throw-together stuff, but I do a lot of wire wrapping stuff where I wrap things from scratch,” she said. “I specially select stones and crystals from different shops around locally, but also from people who actually cut the stones. I have one guy that I get stuff from, and he’s local-ish, within an hour, and so I just find all unique shapes and sizes of stuff, and I turn them into pendants.”

Since she has done a variety of arts, she doesn’t truly have a favorite and feels that each has its own reasons to love them.

“I don’t have any clear favorites. I love playing music. There’s challenges to both. Doing anything artistic or creative has its own unique set of challenges and then also things that you really enjoy about it,” Kieler said. “I really enjoy doing (wire wrapping) in the wintertime because I am a hermit and I don’t like the cold. And then in the summertime, I spend a lot more time doing my music.”

Kieler got into music at a very young age and has continued to pursue it ever since.

“Music was an easy thing because it came naturally to me, at least the singing part. The other parts didn’t come so naturally, like learning instruments and things like that, because those aren’t necessarily my forte. I always tell people my first instrument is voice, and whatever came after that was out of necessity. But I really enjoy playing piano now,” she said.

Wire wrapping came to her later in life as she evolved her artistic and “crafty” abilities.

“With the wire wrapping, anybody who considers themself in the Midwest crafty, they start with one craft and then they morph into many others, and I think my original craft that I started with was scrapbooking which had its place then, but I kind of evolved into doing a large assortment of things. Jewelry kind of stuck a little bit more because there was a little bit more flexibility, and the projects were smaller, so you know, a pair of earrings, if I spend 10 minutes or 20 minutes or 30 minutes on it, that’s a short amount of time in the grand scheme of things. Most of my pendants, if I spent a large amount of time on them, I might have six hours into some,” she said.

One of her favorite wire wrappings she has created is a pendant in the shape of a butterfly wing.

“At the Art Walk, I sold, I guess I would call it my most prized pendant. So this was one of the ones that was an odd shape. It was sort of tear-dropped, but it had this oblong end to it, and I’m like, ‘What am I going to do with that?’ So I had a couple of different options, but ultimately, I ended up doing a butterfly wing pendant, which I absolutely loved, and then I designed the bail so it could hang two different ways, and it’s very intricate, a lot of time went into that, so that was my proudest one because that was the first one I actually planned,” Kieler said. “Most of my other things were not. You know, you plan this is what wires I’m going to use because it matches best with this stone, but from there it just morphs into whatever it morphs into, and when I decide it’s done, that’s when it’s done.”

Ever since she was young, she has been doing some form of art, and it is basically intertwined with her life.

“I’ve been doing art pretty much my whole life. It is infused into pretty much everything I do. I’m also a massage therapist and do a whole bunch of things here and I teach as well, so I kind of do a lot of things, but art is infused in everything, like it’s infused into my logo,” she said.

For her, inspiration can strike from anywhere. While her inspiration tends to come from experiences, she believes that it can truly arise at any time from anything.

“I think inspiration is all around us, so in any given moment, there could be something that I listen to, something that I see, it could be an interaction that I had with someone that spurred me into doing something, like a lot of my music that I’ve written has been either relationship-based or, like I have a silly song called “Sad Banana” that is literally about a banana rotting on the counter because it went bad before I could turn it into banana bread or something else, and then I was like I wonder what about that banana? From the perspective of the banana, it’s got to be pretty sad just watching your life wither away with no purpose. So that’s a goofy example, but you can literally draw inspiration from anywhere,” Kieler said.

Along with her wire wrapping, she also makes jewelry from vintage pieces that she finds, as well as bullet casing jewelry. Her bullet casing jewelry comes with the help of her brother.

“I also do bullet casing jewelry. So my brother is a veteran, and he reloads ammo. He’s like, a gun enthusiast, but upon reloading, there’s things that can’t be reloaded, like these .22 shells, but also things he can’t reload because it’s below whatever standards for reloading he gives to me, and then I give it a new home and repurpose it into something else,” she explained.

The reason that she will also make jewelry from vintage pieces is that she wants to re-purpose something that would otherwise just be thrown away.

“Even with my components that I use for jewelry, so some beads, are things that I actually sometimes find in vintage jewelry, and I pull it apart, and then I create something new with it, just to do the reduce, reuse, recycle. I try to be conscious about that because we live in a world where everything is thrown out, so I do try to incorporate that as well,” she said.

Kieler mentioned that she truly likes making art that is unique and one of a kind, which is another reason why she loves doing wire wrapping.

“The wire wrapping I really enjoy just because everything is really individual and unique. Nothing I make is made the same way twice, and that to me is a cool thing because literally everything is custom-made,” she said.

Her use of mainly copper wire also makes them more special as, after a while, the wire can patina and add another bit of color and uniqueness to the pieces. Whether she is playing music for a crowd or wire wrapping a pendant, art is an important part of her life and something she truly enjoys.