Get! Downtown reflection

While being surrounded by the community of Lynchburg on Friday night at the 11th annual Get! Downtown, my group and I were drawn into a booth with macrame hangings all around.

Kelli Tesh Maturano, owner of All Strings Detached, had pink, yellow and cream macrame wall hangs covering her booth as she demonstrated how she creates the knot decorations for the customers passing through her booth. When we walked into the colorful tent, Maturano was delighted to discuss her business and the motives behind her company.

The angle for our story came naturally as Maturano went into detail how she incorporates her lifestyle of sustainability into her macrame side business. Maturano, a recent grad from Appalachian State University, studied Sustainable Development and continues to incorporate what she learned into her everyday life.

As she continued to share her passion behind making earth friendly decisions with the products she uses, Maturano also informed us on her current full-time job — Liberty University’s Recycling Coordinator.

I believe this story as many community aspects to it, starting with the fact that Maturano is new to the Lynchburg area and used Get! Downtown as her official introduction into the community. You can also find that Maturano cares for whatever community she is in by making environmentally sustainable decision, which is now Lynchburg. As she continues to grow with her new Etsy store front, Maturano hopes to gain more of an audience from Lynchburg as she begins to settle here.

I learned quickly from this experience to be open minded to what looked like a simple, hand-crafted macrame tent and discovered how much more meaning was behind her art decorations. Maturano is able to build a platform of sustainability while capitalizing on an old trend that is making a comeback.

Overall, our group tactics worked really well and we were all able to attribute to the same vision for the story. When we sat down to write the piece, everything flowed really well, and we were able to capture the angle we desired while going into detail about macrame and the new generation that is bringing the rope decor back.

I hope to follow up with Maturano in the future to see how the work she is starting at Liberty is following through.