Author: Jeffrey Roedel

Callin’ Baton Rouge

The only thing in the back was a car seat and boxes of dreams. This is how Meredith Waguespack took to the road at age 31 to drive from Lafayette to New Orleans, trying to kickstart her clothing line by…

Board Games

At a Glance Hometown Ponchatoula Age 28 Occupation Founder/lead designer, Therapy Skateboards Web therapyskateboards.com                     Clocking out after eight hours of sanding and painting cabinetry, most evenings Brent Coker can be…

Shelf life

Select Photos by Randy Krause Schmidt   At A Glance Age 32 Location New Orleans, LA Occupation Co-owner/Co-founder, GoodWood Nola Web goodwoodnola.com   Fast currents, rocky obstacles and significant drops are likely. Sudden maneuvers required. Such hazards of entrepreneurship…

Spirit Filled

Hometown Lakeland, Louisiana Age 32 Occupation President/CEO, Oxbow Rum Distillery Web oxbowrumdistillery.com   Wheeling through the fields, the pickup bumps and bounds past walls of tall golden stalks. Windows rolled down, a small hand hanging out of the truck…

Skin in the game

At a Glance HOMETOWN Mt. Vernon, Illinois AGE 38 OCCUPATION Skincare creator, founder, Oxalis Apothecary WEB Oxalisapothecary.com Through the wild woods around her home in rural southern Illinois, Erin Wexstten used to run as a child, and that adventurous…

Cymbal-ism

At A Glance Hometown Dallas, Texas (Collin), and Broussard, Louisiana (Roz) Age Collin is 46, Roz is 44 Occupation Jewelry designers Web secondlinejewels.com @secondlinejewels   When Phil Collins and his band Genesis need another batch of designer dominoes for…

Candle with Care

At A Glance Hometown | Charenton, Louisiana Age | 49 Occupation | Candlemaker, shop owner, Fifolet Candle Makers Web | fifoletcandles.com   Blink and you’ll miss the small, knee-high roadside “Candle Shop” sign out front. But off the main…

Freedom of the Press

With one bare foot steering the large silver press wheel, and two hands secure around the climbing boy’s bottom, his rainboots dangling over her ash-colored shop apron, this tangle of limbs and kinetic energy somehow stands in perfect poise,…

Covering Lots of Ground

At A Glace Hometown London Age 27 Occupation Illustrator, product designer Website Wemightbeonfire.net Instagram @wemightbeonfire   It’s not all that common to find a New Orleanian slowly roaming the French Quarter, camera in hand and enthralled with every curve…

About Face

At A Glance Hometown Greenwood, South Carolina Age 36 Instagram @basqo_     It’s an epic, bejeweled beast of folkloric proportions. Or else it’s a mischievous, spinning sun prop escaped from the set of a children’s TV show and…

Paper Trail

At a Glance Name Frank Hamrick Location Ruston Business Printmaker and book craftsman Website frankhamrick.com   He’s no fortune teller. He makes paper. That’s how Frank Hamrick knows the exact future of the T-shirt he’s wearing, and it’s not…

Sticker Shock

  Unfortunately, swinging the fridge door wide revealed only a cavernous abundance of empty space surrounding one edible item: a lonely bag of shredded cheese. Tired, stressed and real meal-deprived from days of last-minute arts market prep, Daneisha Davis…

Surface Safari

  Connecting her bedroom to her sister’s and to the den, the triangular fireplace in the middle of the old 1910s home designer Hope Johnson grew up in provided not only ample opportunity for post-bedtime whispers — “mostly, I…

Louisiana Made: Stick With It

Saturdays always meant chores in the Kincel house. Early mornings brought work in dad’s small backyard shed or hours sweating under the car hood in the driveway — all while Frank Kincel’s friends were playing ball and biking the roads…

Cut and Dried

Belief in the resurrection runs deep in Dreux Barra’s life, and as it turns out, in his gumbo pot, too. The Youngsville-based food entrepreneur’s holy trinity mix — that’s bell pepper, celery and onion, for those unbaptized in the wild…

Love and Light

Illumination is a delicate thing. Like collaboration, it can take intentionality, an understanding of the environment and a sharp eye to make it most effective. Lafayette’s Boonies Design + Fabrication knows a lot about light and creativity — their…

Go With Your Gut

It takes a lot of courage to launch a new culinary brand, but for Kaitlynn Fenley and Jon Scott Chachere, the creative couple has guts down to a science. As an informative wellness blog-turned-fermented foods brand, Cultured Guru is backed…

Louisiana Made: Arts and Sciences

You see a lot of things out in the wild, but if nothing else, Sandra Walkin believes in resurrection. Reaching out beyond her sun-drenched, glassed-in porch, thousands of pines, pecans, winged elms, river birches and more stand as towering reminders…

Louisiana Made: Well Armed

Rounding the corner past a path of palms, ferns and lilies in the expanse of the greenhouse, Harper runs beaming, her arms waving wide like falcon wings. The young girl refuses to take off her new jacket; she pleads with…

Louisiana Made: Wear Y’at

Stacked three and four high and all around Blake Haney are brown boxes of just about everything: stickers, T-shirts, hats, socks — everything. Leaning back in his chair and turning his attention from his computer for what looks like the…

Louisiana Made: So Fresh and So Clean

When bathing (thankfully) began trending again in the 19th century, the search was on for ways to produce affordable soap on a large enough scale to keep the working class disease-free, healthy and able to fill the factories and fields…

Louisiana Made: Pitcher Perfect

If you’re speeding or texting you’ll probably miss it, but tucked away in a beige block of industrial-looking storehouses off a small side road in Hammond, stands what the Brewers Association has twice named one of the 50 fastest-growing craft…

Louisiana Made: Dream Weaver

The opulent palaces and forested expanses of foothills stretching up to the highs of the Himalayas were enthralling, but Trishala Bhansali found her creativity molded more by muslins and silk brocade and block prints. The entrepreneur witnessed these among the…

Louisiana Made: Sweet Preservation

Their fingers were crimson — almost stained — and with bellies full like the certainty of a cicada song at sunset, baskets of strawberries remained, and a decision had to be made. “There were just too many, and we didn’t…